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THE DARK HOUSE 


• Yr 





THE DARK HOUSE 


BY 

R. WYLIE 

AUUHOR OF “the DAUGHTER OF BRAHMA,” 
“the shining HEIGHTS,” ETC. 



NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 Fifth Avenue 



(Copyright, 1922, 

By E. P. Dutton & Company 




All Rights Reserved 




PRINTED IN THE UNITED 
STATES OF AMERICA 


m 18 1922 





THE DARK HOUSE 


PART I 
I 

§1 

cigar was a large one and Robert Stonehouse was 
small. At the precise moment, in fact, when he leant 
out of the upstairs bedroom window, instinctively seek- 
ing fresh air, he became eight years old. He did not know 
this, though he did know that it was his birthday and that 
a birthday was a great and presumably auspicious oc- 
casion. His conception of what a birthday ought to be 
was based primarily on one particular event when he had 
danced on his mother’s bed, shouting, “I’m five — I’m 
five!” in unreasonable triumph. His mother had greeted 
him gravely, one might say respectfully, and his father, 
who when he did anything at all did it in style, had given 
him a toy fort fully garrisoned with resplendent High- 
land soldiers. And there had been a party of children 
whom, as a single child, he disliked and despised and 
whom he had ordered about unreproved. From start to 
finish the day had been his very own. 

Soon afterwards his mother disappeared. They said 
she was dead. He knew that people died, but death con- 
veyed nothing to him, and when his father and Christine 
went down to Kensal Green to choose the grave, he picked 
flowers from the other graves and sent them to his mother 
with Robert’s love. Christine had turned away her face, 
crying, and James Stonehouse, whose sense of drama never 
quite failed him, had smiled tragically; but Robert never 

1 


2 


THE DARK HOUSE 


even missed her. His only manifestation of feeling was a 
savage hatred of Christine, who tried to take her place. 
For a time indeed his mother went completely out of his 
consciousness. But after a little she came back to him 
by a secret path. In the interval she had ceased to be 
connected with his evening prayer and his morning bath 
and all the other tiresome realities and become a crea- 
ture of dreams. She grew tall and beautiful. He liked 
to be alone — ^best of all at night when Christine had put 
the light out — so that he could make up stories about her 
and himself and their new mystical intimacy. He knew 
that she was dead but he did not believe it. It was just 
one of those mysterious tricks which grown-up people 
played on children to pretend that death was so enor- 
mously conclusive. Though he had buried the black kitten 
with his own hands in the back garden, and had felt the 
stiffness of its pitiful body and the dank chill of its once 
glossy fur, he was calmly sure that somewhere or other, 
out of sight, it still pursued its own tail with all the 
solemnity of kittenhood. 

One of these nights the door would open and his mother 
would be there. In this dream of her she appeared to him 
much as she had done once in Kensington High Street 
when he had wilfully strayed from her side and lost him- 
self, and, being overwhelmed with the sense of his small- 
ness and forlornness, had burst into a howl of grief. Then 
suddenly she had stood out from the midst of the sym- 
pathetic crowd — remote, stern and wonderful — and he 
had flung himself on her, knowing that whatever she might 
do to him, she loved him and that they belonged to one 
another, inextricably and for all time. 

So she stood on the threshold of his darkened room, and 
at that vision his adoration became an agony and he lay 
with his face hidden in his arms, waiting for the touch of 
her hand that never came, until he slept. 

Christine became his mother. Every morning at nine 
o’clock she turned the key of the pretentious mansion 
where J ames Stonehouse had set up practice for the twen- 


THE DARK HOUSE 


3 


tieth time in his career, and called out, ‘^Hallo, Robert!” 
in her clear, cool voice, and Robert, standing at the top 
of the stairs in his night-shirt, called back, “Hallo, Chris- 
tine!” very joyously because he knew it annoyed Edith, 
his father’s new wife, listening jealously from behind her 
bedroom door. 

And then Christine scrubbed his ears, and sometimes, 
when there were no servants, a circumstance which coin- 
cided exactly with a periodical financial crisis, she scrubbed 
the floors. Robert’s first hatred had changed rapidly 
to the love he would have given his mother had she lived. 
There was no romance about it. Christine was not om- 
nipotent as his mother had become. He knew that she, too, 
was often terribly unhappy, and their helplessness in the 
face of a common danger gave them a sort of equality. 
But she was good to him, and her faithfulness was the one 
sure thing in his convulsed and rocking world. He clung 
to her as a drowning man clings to a floating spar, and 
his father’s, “I wish to God, Christine, you’d get out and 
leave us alone,” or, “I won’t have you in my house. You’re 
poisoning my son’s mind against me,” reiterated regu- 
larly at the climax of one of the hideous rows which dev- 
astated the household, was like a blow in the pit of the 
stomach, turning him sick and faint with fear. 

But Christine never went. Or if she went she came 
back again. As James Stonehouse said in a burst of 
savage humour, “Kick Christine out of the front door and 
she’ll come in at the back.” Every morning, no matter 
what had happened the night before, there was the quiet, 
resolute scratch of her latch-key in the lock, and when 
James Stonehouse, sullen and menacing, brushed rudely 
against her in the hall, she went on steadily up the stairs 
to where Robert waited for her, and they fell into each 
other’s arms like two sorrowful comrades. Ever after- 
wards he could conjure her up at will as he saw her then. 
She was like a porcelain marquise over whom an intangible 
permanent shadow had been thrown. 

He knew dimly that she had “people” who disapproved 


4 


THE DARK HOUSE 


of her devotion, and that over and over again, by some i 
new mysterious sacrifice, she had staved off disaster. He 
knew that she had been his father’s friend all her life and 
that his mother and she had loved one another. There 
was some bond between these three that could not be 
broken, and he, too, was involved — fastened on as an after- 
thought, as it were, but so firmly that there could be no 
escape. Because of it Christine loved him. He knew that 
he was not always a very lovable little boy. Even with her 
he could be obstinate and cruel — cruel because she was so 
much less than his mother had become — and there were 
times when, with a queer unchildish power of self-visualiza- 
tion, he saw himself as a small fair-haired monster growing 
black and blacker with the dark and evil spirit that was in 
him. But Christine never seemed to see him like that. 
There was some borrowed halo about his head that blinded 
her. It did not matter how bad he was, she had always 
love and excuses ready for him. And she was literally 
all he had in the world. 

But even she had not been able to make his birthday a 
success. Indeed, ever since that one outstanding day all 
the celebrations had been failures, though he had never 
ceased to look forward to them. For days before his last 
birthday he had suspected everyone of secret delicious 
plottings on his behalf. He had come down to breakfast 
shaking with anticipation. All through the morning he 
had waited for the surprise that was to be sprung on him, 
hanging at everyone’s heel in turn, and it was only 
towards dusk that he knew with bitter certainty that he 
had been forgotten. A crisis had wiped him and his birth- 
day out altogether. And then he had cried, and James 
Stonehouse, moved to generous remorse, had rushed out 
and bought a ridiculously expensive toy having first bor- 
rowed money from Christine and scolded her at the top 
of his booming voice for her heartless neglect of his son’s 
happiness. 

Christine had argued with him in her quiet obstinate 
way. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


5 


‘‘But, Jim dear, you can’t afford it ” 

There had been one of those awful rows. 

And Robert had crept that night, unwashed, into bed, 
crying more bitterly than ever. 

But this time he had really had no hope at all. Yes- 
terday had seen a crisis and a super-crisis. In the after- 
noon the butcher had stood at the back door and shouted 
and threatened, and he had been followed almost im- 
mediately by a stout shabby man with a bald head and 
good-natured face, who announced that he had come to 
put a distraint on the furniture which, incidentally, had 
never been paid for. Edith Stonehouse, with an air of 
outraged dignity, had lodged him in the library and re- 
galed him on a bottle of stout and the remnants of a cold 
joint, and it was understood that there he would remain 
until such time as Christine raised £40 from somewhere. 

These were mere incidents — entirely commonplace — 
but at six o’clock James Stonehouse himself had driven 
up in a taxi, to the driver of which he had appeared to 
hand the contents of aU his pockets, and a moment later 
stormed into the house in a mood which was, if anything, 
more devastating than his ungovernable rages. He had 
been exuberant — exultant — ^his good-humour white-hot 
and dangerous. Looking into his brilliant blue eyes with 
their two sharp points of light, it would have been hard to 
teU whether he was laughing or mad with anger. His 
moods were like that — too close to be distinguished from 
one another with any safety. Christine, who had just 
come from interviewing the bailiff, had looked grave and 
disapproving. She knew probably, that her disapproval 
was useless and even disastrous, but there was an ob- 
stinate rectitude in her character that made it impossible 
for her to humour him. But Edith Stonehouse and Robert 
had played up out of sheer terror. 

“You do seem jolly, Jim,” Edith had said in her 
hard, common voice. “It’s a nice change, you bad-tem- 
pered feUow ” 


6 


THE DARK HOUSE 


She had never really recovered from the illusion that 
she had captured him by her charms rather than by her 
poor little fortune, and when she dared she was arch with 
an undertone of grievance. Robert had capered about him 
and held his hand and made faces at Christine so that she 
should pretend too. Otherwise there would be another 
row. But Christine held her ground. 

‘‘The butcher came this afternoon,’^ she said. “He says 
he is going to get out a summons. And the bailiff is in 
again. It’s about the furniture. You said it was paid 
for. I can’t think how you could be so mad. I rang up 
Melton’s about it, and they say the firm wants to prose- 
cute. If they do, it might mean two years’ ” 

Robert had stopped capering. His knees had shaken 
under him with a new, inexplicable fear. But James Stone- 
house had taken no notice. He had gone on spreading 
and warming himself before the fire. He had looked hand- 
some and extraordinarily, almost aggressively, prosperous. 

“I shall write a sharp note to Melton’s. Damned im- 
pertinence. An old customer like myself. Get the fellow 
down into the kitchen. The whole thing will be settled to- 
morrow. I’ve had an amazing piece of luck. Amazing. 
Met Griffiths — you remember my telling you about Alec 
Griffiths, don’t you, Christine.'^ Student with me at the 
University. Got sent down together. Wonderful fellow 
— wonderful. Now he’s in business in South Africa. Made 
his pile in diamonds. Simply rolling. He’s going to let 
me in. Remarkable chap. Asked him to dinner. Oh, 
I’ve arranged all that on my way up. Gunther’s are send- 
ing round a cook and a couple of waiters and all that’s 
necessary. For God’s sake, Christine, try and look as 
though you were pleased. Get into a pretty dress and 
join us. Must do him well, you know. Never do for a 
man like that to get a wrong impression. And I want him 
to see Robert. He knew Constance before we were mar- 
ried. Put him into his best clothes ” 

“He hasn’t got any,” Christine had interrupted bit- 
terly. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


7 


For a moment it had seemed as though the fatal boun- 
dary line would be crossed. Stonehouse had stared at his 
son, his eyes brightening to an electric glare as they 
picked out the patches of the shabby sailor-suit and the 
frantic, mollifying smile on Robert’s face had grown stiff 
as he had turned himself obediently about. 

“Disgraceful. I wonder you women are not ashamed, 
the way you neglect the child — I shall take him to Shool- 
bred’s first thing to-morrow and have him fitted out from 
top to toe ” The gathering storm receded miracu- 

lously. “However, he can’t appear like that. For God’s 
sake, get the house tidy, at any rate ” 

So Robert had been hustled up stairs and the bailiff 
lured into the kitchen, where fortunately he had become 
so drunk that he had had no opportunity to explain to the 
French chef and the two waiters the real reason for his 
presence and his whole-hearted participation in the feast. 

From the top of the stairs Robert had watched Chris- 
tine go into dinner on his father’s arm, and Edith Stone- 
house follow with a black-coated stranger who had known 
his mother. He had listened to the talk and his father’s 
laughter — ^jovial and threatening — and once he had dived 
downstairs and, peering through the banisters like a small 
I blond monkey, had snatched a cream meringue from a 

I passing tray. Then for a moment he had almost believed 

I that they were all going to be happy together. 

I That had been last night. Now there was nothing left 
but the bailiff, still slightly befuddled, an incredible pile 
of unwashed dishes and an atmosphere of stale tobacco. 
James Stonehouse had gone off early in a black and awful 
temper. It seemed that at the last moment the multi-mil- 
lionaire had explained that owing to a hitch in his affairs 
he was short of ready cash and would be glad of a small 
loan. Only temporary, of course. Wouldn’t have 
dreamed of asking, but meeting such an old friend in such 
affluent circumstances 

So the eighth birthday had been forgotten. Robert 
himself could not have explained why grief should have 


8 


THE DARK HOUSE 


driven liim to his father’s cigar-box. Perhaps it was just 
a hecuii geste of defiance, or a reminder that one day he 
too would be grown up and free. At any rate, it was 
still a very large cigar. Though he puffed at it pains- 
takingly, blowing the smoke far out of the window so as 
to escape detection, the result was not encouraging. 
The exquisite mauve-grey ash was indeed less than a 
quarter of an inch long when his sense of wrong and in- 
justice deepened to an overwhelming despair. It was not 
only that even Christine had failed him — everything was 
failing him. The shabby plot of rising ground opposite, 
which justified Dr. Stonehouse’s contention that he looked 
out over open country, had become immersed in a loath- 
some mist, greenish in hue, in which it heaved and rolled 
and undulated like an uneasy reptile. The house likewise 
heaved, and Robert had to lean hard against the lintel of 
the window to prevent himself from falling out. A strange 
sensation of uncertainty — of internal disintegration — ob- 
sessed him, and there was a cold moisture gathering on his 
face. He felt that at any moment anything might hap- 
pen. He didn’t care. He wanted to die, anyhow. They 
had forgotten him, but when he was dead they would be 
sorry. His father would give him a beautiful funeral, and 
Christine would say, “We can’t afford it, Jim,” and there 
would be another awful scene. 

In the next room Edith and Christine were talking as 
they rolled up the Axminster carpet which, since the 
bailiff had no claim on it, was to go to the pawnbroker’s 
to appease the butcher. The door stood open, and he 
could hear Edith’s bitter, resentful voice raised in denun- 
ciation. 

“I don’t know why I stand it. If my poor dear father, 
Sir Godfrey, knew what I was enduring, he would rise from 
the grave. Never did I think I should have to go through 
such humiliation. My sisters say I ought to leave him — 
that I am wanting in right feeling, but I can’t help it. I 
am faithful by nature. I remember my promises at the 
altar — even if Jim forgets his ” 


THE DARK HOUSE d 

'‘He didn’t promise to keep his temper or but of debt,” 
Christine said. 

Edith sniffed loudly. 

“Or away from other women. Oh, it’s no good, Chris- 
tine, I know what I know. There’s always some other 
woman in the background. Only yesterday I found a letter 
from Mrs. Saxburn — that red-haired vixen he brought 
home to tea when there wasn’t money in the house to buy 
bread. I Jell you he doesn’t know what faithfulness 
means.” 

Robert, rising for a moment above his own personal 
anguish, clenched his fist. It was all very well — ^he might 
hate his father, Christine might hate him, though he knew 
she didn’t, but Edith had no right. She was an outsider 
— a bounder 

“He is faithful to his ideal,” Christine answered. “He 
is always looking for it and thinking he has found it. 
And except for Constance he has always been mistaken.” 

“Thank you.” 

“I wasn’t thinking of you,” Christine explained. “There 
have been so many of them — and all so terribly expensive 
— never cheap or common ” 

They were dragging the carpet out into the landing. 
Their voices sounded louder and more distinct. 

“I could bear almost everything but his temper,” Edith 
persisted breathlessly. “He’s like a madman ” 

“He’s iU — sometimes I think he’s very ill ” 

“Oh, you’ve always got an excuse for him, Christine. 
You never see him as he really is. I can’t think why you 
didn’t marry him yourself. I’m sure he asked you. Jim 
couldn’t be alone with a woman ten minutes without pro- 
posing. And everyone knows how fond you are of him 
and of that tiresome child ” 

Robert Stonehouse gasped. The earth reeled under his 
feet. The stump of the cigar rolled off the windowsill, and 
he himself tumbled from his chair and was sick — convul- 
sively, hideously sick. For a moment he remained huddled 
on the floor, half unconscious, and then very slowly the 


10 


THE DARK HO^SE 


green, soul-destroying mist receded and he found Chris- 
tine bending over him, wiping his face, with her pocket- 
handkerchief. 

“Robert, darling, why didn’t you call out?” 

“He’s been smoking,” Edith’s voice declared viciously 
from somewhere in the background. “I can smell it. The 
horrid little boy ” 

“I didn’t — I didn’t ” He kept his feet with an 

enormous effort, scowling at her. He lied shamelessly, 
as a matter of course and without the faintest sense of 
guilt. Everyone lied. They had to. Christine knew that 
as well as anyone. Not that lying was of the slightest 
use. His father’s temper fed on itself and was independ- 
ent alike of fact or fiction. But you could no more help 
lying to him than you could help flinching from a red-hot 
poker. “I didn’t,” he repeated stubbornly, and aU the 
whde repeating to himself, “It’s my birthday — and 
they’ve forgotten. They don’t care.” But he would 
rather have died then and there than have reminded them. 
He would not even let them see how miserable he was, and 
to stop himself from crying he kept his eyes fixed on Edith 
Stonehouse, who in turn measured him with that exag- 
gerated and artificial horror which she considered appro- 
priate to naughty children. 

“Oh, how can you, Robert ? Don’t you know what hap- 
pens to wicked little boys who tell lies?” 

He hated her. He hated the red, coarse-skinned face, 
the tight mouth and opaque brown eyes and the low, stupid 
forehead with its old-fashioned narrow fringe of dingy 
hair. He knew that in spite of Sir Godfrey and the family 
estate of which she was always talking, she was conunon 
to the heart — not a lady like Christine and his mother — 
and her occasionally adopted pose of authority convulsed 
him with a blind, ungovernable fury. He was too young to 
understand that she meant well — was indeed good-natured 
and kindly enough in her natural environment — and as she 
advanced upon him now, in reality to smooth his disor- 
dered hair, he drew back, an absurd miniature replica of 


THE DARK HOUSE 


11 


James Stonehouse in his worst rages, his fists clenched, 
his teeth set on a horrible recurring nausea. 

“If you touch me, Edith — I’U — I’ll bite you 

“Hush, darling — you mustn’t speak like that ” 

“Oh, don’t mind me, Christine. I’m not accustomed 
to respect in this house. I don’t expect it. ‘Edith,’ in- 
deed ! Did you ever hear such a thing ! I can’t think what 
Jim was thinking about to allow it. He ought to caU me 
‘Mother’ 

Robert tore himself free from Christine’s soothing em- 
brace. He had a moment’s blinding, heart-breaking vision 
of his real mother. She stood close to him, looking at him 
with her grave eyes, demanding of him that he should 
avenge this insult. And in a moment he would be sick 
again. 

“I wouldn’t — ^wouldn’t call you mother — not if you 
killed me. I wouldn’t if you put me in the fire ” 

“Robert, dear.” 

“You see, Christine — but of course you won’t see. 
You’re blind where he’s concerned. What a wicked tem- 
per. Deceitful, too. I’m sure I’m glad he’s not my child. 
[ He’s going to be like his father.” 

“I want to be like my father. I wouldn’t be lik# you for 
[I anything.” 

■ “Robert, be quiet at once or I shall punish you.” 

She was angry now. She had been greatly tried during 
! the last twenty-four hours, and to her he was just an 
I alien, hateful little boy who made her feel like an inter- 
}\ loper in her own house, bought with her own money. She 
seized him by the arm, shaking him viciously, and he flew 
j at her, biting and kicking with all his strength. 

! It was an ugly, wretched scene. It ended abruptly on 
the landing, where she let go her hold with a cry of pain 
and Robert Stonehouse rolled down the stairs, bumping 
t his head and catching his arm cruelly in the banisters. 
He was on his feet instantly. He heard Christine coming 
and he ran on, down into the hall, where he caught up his 
little boots, which she had been cleaning for him, and after 


12 


THE DARK HOUSE 


a desperate struggle with the latch, out into the road — 
sobbing and blood-stained, heart-broken with shame and 
loneliness and despair. 


§2 

His relationship with the Brothers Banditti across the 
hill was peculiar. It was one of Dr. Stonehouse’s many the- 
ories of life that children should be independent, untram- 
melled alike by parental restrictions and education, and 
except on the very frequent occasions when this particular 
theory collided with his comfort and his conviction that 
his son was being disgracefully neglected, Robert lived 
the life of a lonely and illiterate guttersnipe. He did not 
know he was lonely. He did not want to play with the 
other children in the Terrace. But he did know that for 
some mysterious reason or other they did not want to 
play with him. The trim nursemaids drew their starched 
and shining darlings to one side when he passed, and he 
in turn scowled at them with a fierce contempt to which, all 
unknown, was added two drops of shame and bitterness. 
But even among the real guttersnipes of the neighbour- 
hood he was an outcast. He did not know how to play 
with other children. He was ignorant alike of their ways 
and their games, and, stiff with an agonizing shyness, he 
bore himself before them arrogantly. It was natural that 
they in turn hated him. Like young wolves they flaired 
a member of a strange and alien pack — a creature who 
broke their unwritten laws — and at first they had hunted 
him pitilessly, throwing mud and stones at him, pushing 
him from the pavement, jeering at him. But they had 
not reckoned with the Stonehouse rages. He had flung 
himself on them. He had fought them singly, by twos 
and threes — the whole pack. In single combat he had 
thrashed the grocer’s boy who was several inches taller 
and two years older than himself. But even against a 
dozen his white-hot fury, which ignored alike pain and dis- 
cretion, made him dangerous and utterly unbeatable. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


13 


From all encounters he had come out battered, blood- 
stained, literally in shreds, but clothed in lonely victory. 

Now they only jeered at him from a safe distance. 
They made cruel and biting references to the Stonehouse 
menage, flying with mock shrieks of terror when he was 
unwise enough to attempt pursuit. Usually he went his^ 
way, his head up, swallowing his tears. 

But the Brothers Banditti belonged to him. 

On the other side of the hill was a large waste plot of 
ground. A builder with more enterprise than capital had 
begun the erection of up-to-date villas but had gone bank- 
rupt in the process, and now nothing remained of his am- 
bition but a heap of somewhat squalid ruins. Here, after 
school hours, the Brothers met and played and plotted. 

They had not always been Banditti. Before Robert’s 
advent they had been the nice children of the nicest people 
of the neighbourhood. Their games had been harmless, if 
apathetic, and they had always gone home punctually and 
clean. The parents considered the waste land as a great 
blessing. Robert had come upon them in the course of 
his lonely prowlings, and from a distance had watched 
them play hide and seek. He had despised them and their 
silly game, but, on the other hand, they did not know who 
he was and would not make fun of him and taunt him with 
unpaid bills, and it had been rather nice to listen to their 
cheerful voices. The ruins, too, had fired his imagination. 
He had viewed them much as a general views the scene of 
a prospective battle. And then — strangest attraction of 
all — there had been Frances Wilmot. She was different 
from any other little girl he had ever seen. She was clean 
and had worn a neat green serge dress with neat brown 
shoes and stockings which toned with her short curly 
brown hair, but she did not shine or look superior or dis- 
dainful. Nor had she been playing with her companions, 
though they ran back to her from time to time as though 
in some secret way she had led their game. When Robert 
had come upon her she was sitting on the foundations of 
what was to have been a magnificent portico, her arms 


14 


THE DARK HOUSE 


clasped about her knees, and a curious intent look on her 
pointed delicate face. That intent look, as he was to dis- 
cover, was very constant with her. It was as though she 
were always watching something of absorbing interest 
which no one else could see. Sometimes it amused her, and 
and then a flicker of laughter ran up from her mouth to 
her grey eyes and danced there. At other times she was 
sorry. Her face was like still water, ruffled by invisible 
winds and mirroring distant clouds and sunshine. 

Robert had watched her, motionless and unobserved, 
for several minutes. It had been a very unhappy day. 
Christine had gone off in a great hurry on some dark er- 
rand in the city connected with “raising money on a re- 
version and had forgotten to wash him, and though he did 
not like being washed, the process did at least make him 
feel that someone cared about him. Now at sight of this 
strange little girl an almost overpowering desire to cry 
had come over him — to fling himself into someone’s arms 
and cry his heart out. 

She had not sat there for long. She had got up and 
moved about — flitted rather — so that Robert, who had 
never heard of a metaphor, thought of a brown leaf danc- 
ing in little gusts of wind. And then suddenly she had seen 
him and stood still. His heart had begun to pound against 
his ribs. For it was just like that that in his dreams his 
mother stood, looking at him. She, too, had grey eyes, 
serene and grave, penetrating into one’s very heart. 

And after a moment she had smiled. 

“Hallo !” 

Robert’s voice, half choked with tears had croaked 
back “Hallo !” and she had come a little nearer to him. 

“What’s your name.?^” 

“Robert — ^Robert Stonehouse.” 

“Where do you come from.^*” 

He had jerked his head vaguely in the direction of the 
hiU, for he did not want her to know. 

“Over there.” 

“Why are you crying 


THE DARK HOUSE 


1 ? 

“I — I don’t know.” 

“Would you like to play with us.f^’^ 

“Yes — I — I think I would.” 

She had called the other children and they had come 
at once and stood round her, gazing wide-eyed at him, 
not critically or unkindly, but like puppies considering 
a new companion. The girl in the green serge frock had 
taken him by the hand. 

“This is a friend of mine, Robert Stonehouse. He’s 
going to play with us. Tjag — ^Robert !’^ 

And she had tapped him on the arm and was off like 
a young deer. 

All his awkwardness and shyness had dropped from 
him like a disguise. No one knew that he was a strange 
little boy or that his father owed money to all the trades- 
people. He was just like anyone else. And he had run 
I faster than the fastest of them. He had wanted to show 
her that he was not just a cry baby. And whenever he 
had come near her he had been all warm with happiness. 

In three days the nice children had become the Brothers 
' Banditti with Robert Stonehouse as their chief. Having 
i admitted the stranger into their midst he had gone 
■ straight to their heads like wine. He was a rebel and an 
I outlaw who had suddenly come into power. At heart he 
j was older than any of them. He knew things about rever- 
! sions and bailiffs and life generally that none of them had 
j ever heard of in their well-ordered homes. He was strong 
and knew how to fight. The nice children had never fought 
t but they found they liked it. Once, like an avenging Attila, 
he had led them across the hill and fallen upon his ancient 
enemies with such awful effect that they never raised their 
heads again. And the Banditti had returned home whoop- 
ing and drunk with victory and the newly discovered joy of 
battle. His hand was naturally against all authority. He 
led them in dark plottings against their governesses and 
nursemaids, and even against the Law itself as personified 
by an elderly, somewhat pompous policeman whose beat 
included their territory. On foggy afternoons they 


16 


THE DARK HOUSE 


peale3 the doorbells of such as had complaint against 
them, and from concealment gloated over the indignant 
maids who had been lured down several flights of stairs 
to answer their summons. And no longer were they 
nice children who returned home clean and punctual ta 
* the bosom of their families. 

Very rarely had the Banditti showed signs of revolt 
against Robert’s despotism, and each time he had won 
them back with ease which sowed the first seeds of cyni- 
cism in his mind. It happened to be another of the elder 
Stonehouse’s theories — which he had been known to ex- 
pound eloquently to his creditors — that children should 
be taught the use of money, and at such times as the 
Stonehouse family prospered Robert’s pocket bulged with 
sums that staggered the very imagination of his followers. 
He appeared among them like a prince — ^lavish, reckless, 
distributing chocolates of superior lineage with a haughty 
magnificence that brought the disaffected cringing to his 
feet. 

But even with them he was not really happy. At 
heart he was still a strange little boy, different from the 
rest. There was a shadow over him. He knew that 
apart from him they were nice, ordinary children, and 
that he was a man full of sorrows and mystery and bitter 
experience. He despised them. They could be bought 
and bribed and bullied. But if he could have been ordi- 
nary as they were, with quiet, ordinary homes and people 
who loved one another and paid their bills, he would have 
cried with joy. 

When he did anything particularly bold and reckless 
he looked out of the corners of his eyes at Frances Wilmot 
to see if at last he had impressed her. For she eluded 
him. She never defied his authority, and very rarely took 
part in his escapades. But she was always there, some- 
times in the midst, sometimes just on the fringe, like a 
bird, intent on business of its own, coming and going in 
the heart of human affairs. Sometimes she seemed hardly 
to be aware of him, and sometimes she treated him as 


THE DARK HOUSE 


17 


though there were an unspoken intimacy between them 
which made him glow with pride for days afterwards. She 
would put her arm about him and walk with him in the 
long happy silence of comradeship. And once, quite un- 
expectedly, she had seemed gravely troubled. “Are you 
a good little boy, Robert.^” she had asked, as though 
she really expected him to know, and relieve her mind 
about it. 

And afterwards he had cried to himself, for he was 
sure that he was not a good little boy at all. He was 
sure that if she knew about his father and the bailiffs she 
would turn away in sorrow and disgust. 

He knew that she too was different from the others, 
but with a greater difference than his own. He knew 
that the Banditti looked up to her for the something in 
her that he lacked, that if she lifted a finger against him, 
his authority would be gone. And the knowledge dark- 
ened everything. It was not that he cried about his lead- 
ership. He would have thrown it at her feet gladly. But he 
longed to prove to her that if he was not a good little boy 
he was, at any rate, a terribly fine fellow. He had to make 
her look up to him and admire him like the rest of the Ban- 
ditti, otherwise he would never hold her fast. And every- 
thing served to that end. Before her he swaggered mon- 
strously. He did things which turned him sick with fear. 
Once he had climbed to the top of a dizzy wall in the ruins, 
and had postured on the narrow edge, the bricks crumb- 
ling under him, the dust rising in clouds, so that he looked 
like a small devil dancing in mid-air. And when he had 
reached ground again he had found her reading a book. 
Then, the plaudits of the awestruck Banditti sounded like 
jeers. Nothing had ever hurt so much. 

About the time that the Banditti first came into his life 
the vision of his mother began to grow not less wonderful, 
but less distinct. She seemed to stand a little farther off, 
as though very gradually she were drawing away into the 
other world, where she belonged. And often it was 
Frances who played with him in his secret stories. 


18 


THE DARK HOUSE 


§3 

He threw his indoor shoes into the area. In the next 
street, beyond pursuit, he sat down on a doorstep and 
put on his boots, lacing them with difficulty, for he was 
half blind with tears and anger. He could not make up 
his mind how to kill Edith. Nothing seemed quite bad 
enough. He thought of boiling her in oil or rolling her 
down hill in a cask full of spikes, after the manner of some 
fairy story that Christine had told him. It was not the 
pain, though his arm felt as though it had been wrenched 
out of its socket, and the blood trickled in a steady stream 
from his bumped forehead. It was the indignity, the out- 
rage, the physical humiliation that had to be paid back. 
It made him tremble with fury and a kind of helpless 
terror to realize that, because he was little, any common 
woman could shake and beat him and treat him as though 
he belonged to her. He would tell his father. Even his 
father, who had so far forgotten himself as to marry such 
a creature, would see that there were things one couldn^t 
endure. Or he would call up the Banditti and plot a dev- 
astating retaliation. 

In the meantime he was glad he had bitten her. 

He walked on unsteadily. The earth still undulated and 
threatened every now and then to rise up like a wave in 
front of him and cast him down. He was growing 
cold and stiff, too, in the reaction. He had stopped cry- 
ing, but his teeth chattered and his sobs had degenerated 
into monotonous, soul-shattering hiccoughs. Passers-by 
looked at him disapprovingly. Evidently that nasty little 
boy from No. 10 had been fighting again. 

He had counted on the Banditti, but the Banditti were 
not on their usual hunting-ground. An ominous silence 
answered the accustomed war-cry, uttered in an unsteady 
falsetto, and the ruins had a more than usually dejected 
look, as though they had suddenly lost all hope of them- 
selves. He called again, and this time, like an earth- 
sprite, Frances Wilmot rose up from a sheltered comer 


THE DARK HOUSE 


19 


and waved to him. She had a book in her hand, and she 
rubbed her eyes and rumpled up her short hair as though 
rousing herself from a dream. 

“I did hear you,” she said, ‘‘but I was working something 
out. I’ll tell you all about it in a minute. But what’s 
happened .f* Why is your face aU bleeding?” 

She seemed so concerned about him that he was glad of 
his wounds. And yet she had the queer effect of making 
him want to cry again. That wouldn’t do. She wouldn’t 
respect him if he cried. He thrust his hands deep into 
his pockets and knitted his fair brows into a fearful Stone- 
house scowl. 

“Oh, it’s nothing. I’ve had a row — at home. That’s 
all. My father’s new wife h-hit me — and I b-bit her. 
Jolly hard. And then I fell downstairs.” 

“Why did she hit you?” 

“Oh, I don’t know. She’s just a beast ” 

“Of course you know. Don’t be silly.” 

“Well, she said I’d been smoking, and I said I 
hadn’t ” 

“Had you? You look awfully green.” 

“Yes, I had.” 

“What’s the good of telling lies?” 

“It’s no good telling the truth,” Robert answered 
stolidly. “They only get crosser than ever. She hadn’t 
any right to hit me. She’s not even a relation.” 

“She’s your step-mother.” 

He began to tremble again uncontrollably. 

“She’s n-not. Not any sort of a mother. My mother’s 
dead.” 

It was the first time he had ever said it, even to him- 
self. It threw a chill over him, so that for a moment he 
stopped thinking of Edith and his coming black revenge. 
He had done something that could never be undone. He 
had closed and locked a great iron door in his mother’s 
face. “She’s just a beast,” he repeated stubbornly. “I’d 
like to kill her.” 

Frances considered him with her head a little on one 


20 


THE DARK HOUSE 


side. It was like her not to enter into any argument. One 
couldn’t tell what she was thinking. And yet one knew 
that she was feeling things. 

“I’d wipe that blood off,” she said. “It’s trickling on to 
your collar. No, not with your hand. Where’s your 
hanky.?”’ 

He tried to look contemptuous. He did, in fact, despise 
handkerchiefs. The nice little girls in the Terrace had 
handkerchiefs, ostentatiously clean. He had seen them, 
and they filled his soul with loathing. Now he was 
ashamed. It seemed that even Frances expected him to 
have a handkerchief. 

“I haven’t got one,” he said. 

“How do you blow your nose, then.f^” 

“I don’t,” he explained truculently. 

She executed one of her queer little dances, very solemn- 
ly and intently and disconcertingly. It seemed to be her 
way of withdrawing into herself at critical moments. 
When she stopped he was sure she had been laughing. 
Laughter still twinkled at the comers of her mouth and 
in her eyes. 

“Well, I’m going to tidy you up, anyhow. Come sit 
(down here.” 

He obeyed at once. It comforted him just to be near 
her. It was like sitting by a fire on a cold day when you 
were half frozen. Something in you melted and came to 
life and stretched itself, something that was itself gentle 
and compassionate. It was difficult to remember that he 
meant to kill Edith frightfully, though his mind was quite 
made up on the subject. Meantime Frances had produced 
her own handkerchief — a large clean one — and methodi- 
cally rubbed away the blood and some of the tear stains, 
and as much of the dirt as could be managed without soap 
and water. This done, she refolded the handkerchief with 
its soiled side innermost, and tied it neatly round the 
wounded head, leaving two long ends which stood up like 
rabbit’s ears. A gust of April wind wagged them com- 
ically, and made mock of the sorrowful, grubby face under- 


THE DARK HOUSE 


21 


neath. Even Frances, who was only nine herself, must 
have seen that the sorrow was not the ordinary childish 
thing that came and went, leaving no trace. In a way it 
was always there. When he was not laughing and shouting 
you saw it — a careworn, anxious look, as though he were 
always afraid something might pounce out on him. It 
ought to have been pathetic, but somehow or other it was 
not. For one thing, he was not an angel-child, bearing 
oppression meekly. He was much more like a yeUow- 
haired imp waiting suUenly for a chance to pounce back, 
and the whole effect of him was at once furtive and obsti- 
nate. Indeed, anyone who knew nothing of the Stone- 
house temper and duns and forgotten birthdays would 
have dismissed him as an ugly, disagreeable little boy. 

But Frances Wilmot, who knew nothing of these things 
either, crouched down beside him, her arm about his 
shoulder. 

“Poor Robert!” 

He began to hiccough again. He had to clench his teethi 
and his fists not to betray the fact that the hiccoughs 
were really convulsively swallowed sobs asserting them- 
selves. He wanted to confide in her, but if she knew the 
truth about his home and his people she wouldn’t play 
with him any more. She would know then that he wasn’t 
nice. And besides, he had some dim notion of protecting 
her from the things he knew. 

“You t-t-tied me up jolly well,” he said. “It’s comfy 
now. It was aching hard.’^ 

“I like tying up things,” she explained easily. “You 
see, I’m going to be a doctor.” 

The rabbit’s ears stopped waving for a minute in sheer 
astonishment. 

“Girls aren’t doctors.” 

“Yes, they are. Heaps of them. I’m reading up al- 
ready, in that book. It’s all about first-aid. There’s the 
bandage I did for you. You can read how it’s done.” 

He couldn’t. And he was ashamed again. In his shame 
he began to swagger. 


22 


THE DARK HOUSE 


‘‘My father’s a doctor — awfully clever ” 

“Is he? HowjoUy! Why didn’t you tell me? Has he 
lots of patients?” 

“Lots. All over the world. But he doesn’t think much 
of other doctors. L-licensed h-humbugs, he calls them.” 

She drew away a little, her face between her hands, and 
he felt that somehow he had failed again — that she had 
slipped through his fingers. If only for a moment she 
had looked up to him and believed in him the evil spirit 
that was climbing up on to his shoulders would have fled 
away. There was a stout piece of stick lying amidst the 
rubble at his feet, and he took it up and felt it as a swords- 
man tests his blade. 

“I’m going to be a doctor too,” he said truculently. 
“A big doctor. I shall make piles of money, and have 
three ass-assistants. P’r’aps, if you’re any good you 
shall be one of them.” 

She did not answer. The intent, observing look had 
come into her eyes. The cool wind lifted the brown hair 
so that it was like a live thing floating about her head. 
She seemed as lovely to him as his mother. He wanted 
terribly to say to her, “It’s my birthday, Francey, and 
they haven’t even wished me many happy returns but 
that would have shown her how little he was, and how un- 
happy. Instead, he began to lunge and parry with an in- 
visible opponent, talking in a loud, fierce voice. 

“I wish the others would come. I’ve got a topping 
plan. Edith goes shopping ’bout six o’clock when it’s 
almost dark. We’ll wait at the corner of John Street 
and jump out at her and shriek like Red Indians. And 
then she’ll drop dead with fright. She’s such a silly 
beast ” 

Then to his amazement he saw that Francey had grown 
quite white. Her mouth quivered. It was as though she 
were going to cry. And he had never seen her cry. 

“They — they aren’t coming, Robert.” 

“N-not coming? W-why not?” 

“There’s been a row. Someone complained. Their 


THE DARK HOUSE 


23 


people won’t let them come any more. Not to play with 
you. They say — they say ” 

He went on fighting, swinging his sword over his 
head, faster and faster. Someone was pressing his heart 
so that he could hardly breathe. It was all over. They 
knew. Everything was going. Finished. 

“What do they say.^^” 

“They say you’re not a nice little boy 

There were some tall weeds growing out of the tumbled 
bricks. He slashed at them through the mist that was 
blinding him. He would cut their heads off, one after 
another — ^just to show her. 

“I don’t care — I don’t care ” 

“That’s why I waited this afternoon. I wanted to tell 
you. And that I’d come — if you liked — sometimes — as 
often as I could ” 

“I don’t care — I don’t care,” he chanted. 

One weed had fallen, cut in two as by a razor. Now 
another. You had to be jolly strong to break them clean 
off like that. He wasn’t missing once. 

“Don’t!” 

“I shall. Why shouldn’t 1.?^ You couldn’t do it like 
that.” 

Another. No one to play with any more. Never to 
be able to pretend again that one was just like everyone 
else. People drawing away and saying to each other, 
“He’s not a nice little boy!” 

“Please — ^please, don’t, Robert!” 

“Why not.^ They’re only' weeds — ^beastly, ugly 
things.” 

“They’ve not done you any harm. It’s a shame to hurt 
them. I like them.” 

“They’re no good. It’s practice. I’m a soldier. I’m 
cutting the enemy to pieces.” 

A red rage was mounting in him. He hardly knew that 
she had stood up until he saw her face gleaming at him 
through the mist. She was whiter than ever, and her eyf'^ 


24 


THE DARK HOUSE 


had lost their distant look and blazed with an anger pro- 
founder, more deadly, than his own. 

“You shan’t!’^ 

“Shan’t I?” 

She caught the descending stick. He tried to tear it 
from her, and they fought each other almost in silence, 
except for the sound of their quick, painful breath. He 
grew frantic, twisting and writhing. He began to curse 
her as his father cursed Christine. But her slim brown 
wrists were like steel. And suddenly, looking into her 
eyes he saw that she wasn’t angry now. She knew that she 
was stronger than he. She was just sorry for him, for 
everything. 

He dropped the stick. He turned on his heel, gulping 
hard. 

“I don’t fight with girls,” he said. 

He walked away steadily with his head up. He did 
not once look back at her. But as he climbed the hill 
he seemed to himself to grow smaller and smaller, more and 
more tired and lonely. He had lost her. He would never 
play with her again. The Brothers Banditti had gone 
each to his home. They sat by the fireside with their 
people, and were nice children. To-morrow they would 
play just as though nothing had happened. And Francey 
would be there, dancing in and out 

He stumbled a little. The hiccoughs were definitely 
sobs, hard-drawn, shaking him from head to foot. It was 
his birthday. And at the bottom of the hill, hidden in 
evening mist, the big dark house waited for him. 

§4 

There was light showing in the dining-room window, 
so that he knew his father had come home. At that all his 
sorrow and sense of a grievous wrong done to him was 
swallowed up in abject physical terror. Even later in life, 
when things had shrunk into reasonable proportions, it was 
difficult for him to see his father as others had seen him. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


25 


as an unhappy not unlovable man, gifted with an erratic 
genius which had been perverted into an amazing facility 
for living on other people’s money, and cursed with the 
temper of a maniac. To Robert Stonehouse his father 
was from first to last the personification of nightmare. 

He stood now in the deep shadow of the porch, trying 
to make up his mind to ring the bell. His legs and arms 
had become ice-cold and refused to move. There did not 
seem to be anything alive in him except his heart, which 
was beating all over him, in his throat and head and body, 
with a hundred terrible little hammers. He thought of 
the Prince in the story which Christine had read aloud to 
him. The Prince, who was a fine and dashing fellow, had 
gone straight to the black enchanted cave where the drag- 
on lived, and had thumped on the door with the hilt of his 
gold sword and shouted: “Open, Sesame!” And when 
the door opened, he had gone straight in, without turning 
a hair, and slain the dragon and rescued the Princess. 

Somehow the story did not make him braver. He had 
no sword, and his clothes were not of the finest silk 
threaded with gold. He was a small boy in a patched 
sailor-suit, with a bandage round his head and a dirty 
face — cold, hungry and buffeted by a day of storms. 
He wished he could stay there in the shadow until he died, 
and never have to fight anyone again, or screw himself to 
face his father, or live through any more rows. But it 
seemed you didn’t die just because you wanted to. All 
that happened was that you grew colder and more miser- 
able, knowing that the row would be a great deal worse 
when it came. Goaded by this reasoning, he crept down 
the area steps to the back door which, by a merciful 
chance, had been left unlocked, and made his way on tip- 
toe along the dark stone passage to the kitchen. 

It was a servantless period. But there was a light in 
the servants’ living-room, and the red comforting glow of 
a fire. The bailiff lived there. Robert could hear him 
shuffling his feet in the fender, and sniffing and clearing 
his throat as though the silence bothered him, and he were 


26 


THE DARK HOUSE 


trying to make himself at home. For a moment Robert 
longed to go in and sit beside him, not saying anything, 
but just basking in the quiet warmth, protected by the 
presence of the Law which seemed so astonishingly toler- 
ant in the matter of the Stonehouse shortcomings. For 
the bailiff was a good-natured man. He had endeavoured 
to make it clear to Robert from the beginning, by means 
of sundry winks and smiles, that he understood the whole 
situation, which was one in which any gentleman might 
find himself, and that he meant to act like a friend. But 
Robert had only scowled at him. And even now, fright- 
ened as he was, he disdained all parley. The bailiff was 
an enemy, and when it came to a fight the Stonehouse 
family stood shoulder to shoulder. So he crept past 
the cheerful light like a hunted mouse, and up the stairs 
to the green-baize door, which shut off the kitchen from 
the library and dining-room. 

It was an important door. Dr. Stonehouse had had 
it made specially to muffle sounds from the servants’ 
quarters whilst he was working. He had never worked, 
and there had been very rarely any servants to disturb 
him, but the door remained invested with a kind of solem- 
nity. Among other virtues it opened at a touch, itself 
noiseless. 

To Robert it was the veritable entrance to the dragon’^s 
.cave. On one side of it everything was dim and quiet. 
And then it swung back, and you fell through into the 
dragon’s clutches. You heard the awful roar, and your 
heart fainted within you. 

He fell over the top step. He felt he was going to 
be sick again. It was the old, familiar sound. He had 
heard it so often, it was so much part of his daily life 
that it ought not to have frightened him. But it was 
always new, always more terrifying. Each time it had 
new notes of incalculable menace. It was like a brutal 
hammer, crashing down on bruised flesh and shrinking, 
quivering nerves, never quite killing you, but with each 
blow leaving you less capable of endurance. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


27 


His father, Christine and Edith were in the dining- 
room. Robert knew they were all there, though he could 
not see them. The dining-room door at the end of the 
unlit passage stood half open, showing the handsome 
mahogany sideboard and the two Chippendale chairs on 
either side guarding it like lions. They had a curious 
tense, still look, as though what they saw in the hidden 
side of the room struck them stiff with astonishment and 
horror. 

Dr. Stonehouse was speaking. His voice was so low- 
pitched that Robert could not hear what he said. It was 
like the murderous, meaningless growling of a mad dog; 
every now and then it seemed to break free — to explode 
into a shattering roar — and then with a frightful effort to 
be dragged back, held down, in order that it might leap 
out again with a redoubled violence. It was punctuated 
by the sharp, spiteful smack of a fist brought down into 
the open hand. 

Edith whined and once Christine spoke, her clear still 
voice patient and resolute. 

Robert crouched where he had fallen. The baize door 
swung back, and touched him very softly like a hand out 
of the dark. It comforted him. It reminded him that 
he had only to choose, and it would stand between him 
j and this threatening terror — that it would give him time 
to rush back down the stone stairs — out into the street — 
further and further till they would never find him again. 
But he could not move. He couldn’t leave Christine like 
i that. His heart was sick with pity for her. Why did his 
: father speak to her like that? Didn’t he see how good 
I and faithful she was? Didn’t he know that he, Robert, 
I his son, had no one else in the whole world? 

His father was speaking more clearly — shouting each 
i word by itself. 

“You understand what I say, Christine. Either you 
I do what I tell you, or you get out of here ; and, by God, 
this time you shan’t come back. You’ll never set eyes 
i on him again.” 


28 


THE DARK HOUSE 


shall always take care of Robert. I promised Con- 
stance when she was dying. She begged of me ” 

“It’s a lie — a damned lie! You’re not fit to have 
control over my son. You can’t be trusted. You’re a 
bad friend ” 

“I have done all I can. I have told you there is only 
one thing left — to sell this house — start afresh.” 

“Very well, then. That’s your last word — and mine.” 

Suddenly it was still. The stillness was more terrible 
than anything Robert had ever heard. He gulped and 
turned like a small, panic-stricken animal. At the bottom 
of the stairs against the light from the kitchen he could 
see the bailiff’s bulky, honest shadow. 

“Look ’ere, little mister, what’s wrong up there 
Anything I can do ” 

The silence was gone. It was broken by the overturn- 
ing of a chair, by a quiet, sinister scuffling — ^Edith’s voice 
whining, terrified, thrilled by a silly triumph. 

“Don’t — don’t, Jim. Remember yourself ” 

The door was dashed open, and something fell across 
the light, and there was Christine huddled beneath the 
sideboard, her head resting against its cruel comer. Her 
face was towards Robert. He was not to forget it so long 
as he lived. It was so white and still, so angerless. 

His paralysing terror was gone. He leapt to his feet. 
He raced down the passage, flinging himself on his father, 
beating him with his fists, shrieking: 

“You devil — ^you devil!” 

After that he did not know what happened. He seemed 
to be enveloped in a cloud of struggling figures. He heard 
the bailiff’s voice booming, “Come now, sir, this won’t do ; 
I am surprised at a gentleman like you !” and his father’s 
answer, incoherent, shaken with rage and shame. Then 
he must have found his way upstairs. He never remem- 
bered how he got there, but he was lying in his bed, in 
all his clothes, his head hidden beneath the blankets, 
twitching from head to foot as though his body had 
gone mad. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


29 


Downstairs the lock of the front door clicked. There 
was something steadfast and reassuring in the sound, as 
though it were trying to send a message. “Don’t worry, 
I shall come back.” But Robert could not feel or care any 
more. He was struggling with his body as a helpless 
rider struggles with a frantic runaway horse. He found 
out for the first time that his body wasn’t himself at all. 
It was something else. It did what it wanted to. He 
could only cling on to it for dear life. But gradually it 
seemed to weaken, to yield to his exhausted efforts at 
control, and at last lay stretched out, relaxed, drenched 
with an icy sweat. The real himself sank into seas of 
darkness from which convulsive, tearing shudders, less 
and less frequent, dragged him, with throbbing heart and 
starting eyes, back to the surface. 

His bandage had slipped off. He held it tight between 
his hands. He was too numb and stupefied even to think 
of Francey, but there was magic in that dirty, blood- 
stained handkerchief. It might have been a saint’s relic, 
or a Red Indian’s totem, preserving him from evil. He 
knew nothing about saints or totems, but he knew that 
Francey was good and stronger than any of them. 

Downstairs the silence remained unbroken. It was an 
aghast silence, heavy with remorse and shame and self- 
loathing. It was like the thick dregs lying at the bottom 
of the cup. But to Robert it was just silence. He 
sank into it, deeper and deeper, until he slept. 

He began to dream. The dreams walked about inside 
his brain, and were red-coloured as though they were lit 
up by the glow of a hidden furnace. All the people who 
took part in them came and went in great haste. Or they 
made up hurried tableaux — Francey holding the stick and 
looking at him in white anger, Christine huddled on the 
floor, his father black and monstrous towering over her. 
Finally, they aU disappeared together, and Robert knew 
that it was because the Dragon had woken up and was 
coming to devour them. He was climbing up from the 
dining-room. Robert heard his tread on the stairs — 


30 ^ 


THE DARK HOUSE 


heavy, stumbling footsteps such as one would expect from 
a dragon on a narrow, twisting staircase. They came 
nearer and nearer, and with every thud Robert seemed to 
be lifted with a jerk from the depths in which he was 
lying, and to be aware of his body stiffening in terror. 

Then at the last step the Dragon fell, and Robert was 
awake. He sat bolt upright. There had been no mistak- 
ing that dull thump. It lingered in his ears like the echo 
of a thunder-clap. The Dragon had fallen and killed 
himself, for he did not move. It was pitch dark in the 
room, but very slowly and quietly, under the pressure of 
an invisible hand, the door opposite his bed began to open. 
The light outside made a widening slit in the darkness. 
It was like sitting in a theatre watching the curtain go 
up on a nightmare. He could see the banisters, the glow 
from the hall beneath, and something black with a white 
smudge at the end of it lying stretched out from the head 
of the stairs. His body crawled out of bed. He himself 
wanted to hide under the clothes, but his body would not 
let him. It carried him on against his will. When he was 
near enough he saw that the long black thing was a man’s 
arm and the white smudge a hand, clenched and inert, 
on the red carpet. His body tottered out on the landing. 
It was his father lying stretched on the stairs, face down- 
wards. 

He tried to scream, but his throat and tongue were 
dry and swollen. Nor could he touch that still thing, 
in its passivity more terrible than in its violence. He 
was afraid that every moment it would lift its face, and 
show him some new unthinkable horror. He skirted it 
as though it might leap upon him and devour him, and 
rushed downstairs, faster and faster, with a thousand 
devils hunting at his heels. 

And then he seemed again to be dreaming. The bailiff 
ran up from the kitchen in his shirt-sleeves, and he and 
Edith went up the stairs together, leaving him alone in 
the library. The fire had gone out, but he cowered up 
against the grate, hiding his face in his arms. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


31 


They were moving the Dragon. Bump— bump — ^bump 
— bump. He thought he heard Edith cry out, ‘‘Oh, God !” 
and then silence again. Presently Edith stood in the 
doorway, looking at him. Her eyes were red-rimmed, 
and yet there was an air of importance, of solemn triumph 
about her. 

“Your father is — is very ill. The man downstairs has 
gone for the doctor, and I am going to ask Christine to 
come round. You must be a good boy, Robert. You 
must do as I tell you and go to bed.’’ 

So they meant to leave him alone in the house with that 
dreadful still thing lying somewhere upstairs. Or per- 
haps it wasn’t really still. It might have strange powers 
now. You might come upon it anywhere. You couldn’t 
be sure. It might even be in your bed. He did not want 
to disobey Edith. Just then>he could have clung to her. 
But he could not go up those stairs. He could not pass 
those open doors, gaping with unspeakable things. He 
felt that if he kept very still, hiding his face, They 
would not touch him. Thera seemed to be a thin — fright- 
fully thin — partition between him and the world in which 
they lived, and that by a sudden movement he might 
break through. He had to hold fast to his body. It was 
beginning to run away again, to start into long agonized 
shudderings. 

At last a key turned in the latch. Invisible people 
went up the stairs in silence. But he knew that Christine 
was among them. He knew because of the sense of sweet 
security and rest that came over him. He tumbled on to 
the hearthrug and fell asleep. 

He was cold and stiff when the opening of the library 
door wakened him. He did not know who had opened the 
door. All hs saw was Christine coming down the stairs. 
Her face was old and almost silver grey. She was not 
crying like Edith, whose sniffs came assertively and at 
regular intervals from somewhere in the hall. There was 
a still, withdrawn look about her, as though she were 
contemplating something unbreakable that had at last 


32 


THE DARK HOUSE 


been broken, as though a light had gone out in her for 
ever. So that Robert could not run to her as he had 
meant to do. 

It was Edith speaking. 

“You won’t leave me, will you, Christine.^ Poor Jim! 
And then that man — I should die of fright. Besides, it 
wouldn’t be right — not proper — to-morrow one of my 
sisters ” 

“Very well. I will spend the night here. But Robert 
must go to my people. They won’t mind now. I shall 
be back in half an hour.” 

She helped him into his reefer coat, which she had 
brought down with her. And still he could not speak 
to her. She was a long way off from him. As they went 
into the hall he hid his face against her arm for fear of 
the things that he might see. But once they were outside, 
and the good night wind rushed against his face, a great 
intoxicating j oy came over him. He wanted to dance and 
shout. The Dragon was dead. No one could frighten 
them again. 

“Aren’t we ever coming back, Christine 

“No, dear, I don’t think so.” 

He looked back at the grim, high house. For a moment 
a sorrow as deep as joy rushed over him. It was as 
though he knew that something besides the Dragon had 
died up there in that dimly lit room — as though he were 
saying good-bye to something he would never find, though 
he hunted the world over. 

He had been a little boy. He would never be quite 
a little boy again. 

Or perhaps the Dragon wasn’t dead at all — perhaps 
Dragons never died, but lived on and on, hiding in secret 
places, waiting to pounce out on you and drag you back. 

He seized Christine’s hand. 

“Let’s run,” he whispered. “Let’s run fast.” 


n 


§1 

TTE discovered that there were people in the world who 
could make scenes without noise. They were like the 
crocodiles he had met on his visit to the Zoo, lying ma- 
lignantly inert in their oily water. But one twitch of the 
tail, one blink of a lightless eye, was more terrifying than 
the roar of a lion. 

No one made a noise in Christine’s home. The two 
sisters looked at Robert as though he were a small but 
disagreeable smell that they tried politely to ignore. 
They asked him if he wanted a second helping in voices 
of glacial courtesy. They said things to each other and 
at Christine which were quiet and deadly as the rustle 
of a snake in the grass. Robert had never fled from his 
father as he fled from their restrained disgust. He had 
never been more aware of storm than in the smother of 
the heavily carpeted, decorously silent rooms. It broke, 
three days later, not with thunder and lightning, but with 
the brief malicious rattle of a machine-gun. 

“You ought not to have brought him here. You have 
no pride. But, then, you never had. At least some con- 
sideration for our feelings might have been expected. 
We have suffered enough. If you knew what people said 

Mrs. Stonehouse has been talking. She offered to 

take the child. As his natural guardian she had the right. 
An unpardonable, undignified interference ” 

Christine hardly answered. Her fragile face wore the 
look of quiet obstinacy which had braved James Stone- 
house and the worst disasters. Robert had seen it too 
often not to understand. But now his father was dead, 
and instead, inexplicably, he had become the source of 

33 


84. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


trouble. He disgraced Christine. Her people hated her 
because she was good to him. He felt the shame of it all 
over him like a horrible kind of uncleanliness, and be- » 
neath the shame a burning sense of wrong. He hid in | 
dark places. He refused to answer even when Christine ‘ 
called him. He skulked miserably past Christine’s sisters \ 
when he met them in the passage. He scowled at them, | 
his head down, like a hobbled, angry little bull. And ] 
Christine’s sisters drew in their nostrils in a last genteel | 
effort at self-control. 

Christine packed his trunk with ragged odds and ends 
of clothing, and they made a long journey to No. 14., 
Acacia Grove, where Christine had taken two furnished 
rooms and a scullery, which served also as kitchen and 
bath-room. Acacia Grove was the deformed extremity 
of a misbegotten suburb. There were five acacia trees 
planted on either side of the unfinished roadway, but they 
had been blighted in their youth, and their branches were 
spinsterish and threadbare. Behind the houses were a few 
dingy fields, and then a biscuit factory, an obscene, con- 
gested-looking building with belching chimneys. 

Every morning at nine o’clock Robert walked with 
Christine to the corner of the road, and a jolly, red-faced 
’bus, rollicking through the neighbourhood like a slightly 
intoxicated reveller who has landed by mistake in a gather- 
ing of Decayed Gentlefolk, carried her off citywards, and 
at dusk returned her again, grey and worn, with wisps of 
tired brown hair hanging about her face and bundles of 
solemn letters and folded parchment documents bulging 
from her dispatch-case. Then she and Robert shopped 
together at the Stores, and afterwards she cooked over a 
gas-jet in the scullery, and they had supper together, 
almost in the dark, but very peacefully. 

It was too peaceful. One couldn’t believe in it. 

When supper was over Robert washed up and Christine 
uncovered the decrepit, second-hand typewriter which she 
had bought, and began to copy from the letters, bending 
lower and lower over the crabbed writing and sighing 


THE DARK HOUSE 


35 


deeply and impatiently as her fingers blundered at the 
keys. On odd nights, when there was no copying to be 
done, she tried to teach Robert his letters and words of 
one syllable, but they were both too tired, and he yawned 
and kicked the table and was cross and stupid with sleep- 
iness. At nine o’clock he washed himself cautiously and 
crept into the little bed beside her big one and lay curled 
up, listening to the reassuring click-click of the type- 
writer, until suddenly it was broad daylight again, and 
there was Christine getting breakfast. 

In the day-time Robert played ball in the quiet street 
or sat with his elbows on the window-sill and watched the 
people go in and out of the houses opposite. The people 
were grey and furtive-looking, as though they were afraid 
of attracting the notice of some dangerous monster and 
had tried to take on the colour of their surroundings in 
self-protection. They seemed to ask nothing more for 
themselves than that they should be forgotten. Robert 
knew how they felt. He felt like that himself. He was 
never sure that he was really safe. He dared not ask 
questions lest he should find out that his father wasn’t 
dead after all, or that they were on the brink of some new 
convulsion. He did not even ask where Christine went in 
the day-time, or what had become of Edith, or where their 
money came from. He clung desperately to an ignorance 
which allowed him to believe that he and Christine would 
always live like this, quietly and happily. When the land- 
lady’s shadow came heavy-footed up the stairs, he hid 
himself and stuffed his fingers in his ears lest he should 
hear her threaten them with instant expulsion. (It was 
incredible that she and Christine should be talking amic- 
ably about the weather.) Or when they went to the 
butcher’s, he hung behind in dread anticipation of the 
red-faced man’s insolent “And what about that there little 
account of ours. Ma’am?” But the red-faced man smiled 
ingratiatingly and patted him on the back and called him 
a fine young fellow. Christine counted out her money at 
the desk. It made Robert dizzy with joy and pride to see 


36 


THE DARK HOUSE 


her pay her bill, and tears came into his throat and 
nearly choked him. On the way home he behaved abom- 
inably, chased cats or threw stones with a reckless dis- 
regard for their neighbours’ windows, and Christine, look- 
ing into his flushed, excited face, had a movement that was 
like the shadow of his own secret fear. 

“Robert, Robert, don’t be so wild. You might hurt 
yourself — or someone else. It frightens me.” 

And then at once he walked quietly beside her, chilled 
and dispirited. At any moment the new-found common- 
places might drop from him, and everyone would And out 
— the neighbours who nodded kindly and the tradespeople 
who bowed them out of their shops — ^just as Francey and 
the Banditti had found out — and turn away from him, 
, ashamed and sorry. 

He did not think of Francey very often. For when he 
did it was almost always in those last moments together 
that he remembered her — the Francey who was too strong 
for him, the Francey who knew that he was a nasty little 
boy who couldn’t even beat a girl — who told lies — the 
Francey who despised him. And then it was as though 
his body had been bruised afresh from head to foot. But 
he still had her handkerchief. He even kept it hidden 
from Christine lest she should insist on washing it. For 
by now it was incredibly dirty. 

In the day-time he never thought of his father at all. 
But in his sleep one nightmare returned repeatedly. It 
never varied ; it was deflnite and horrible. In it his father, 
grown to demonic proportions, towered over Christine’s 
huddled body, his eyes terrible, his flsts clenched and 
raised to strike. Then in that moment, at the very height 
of his awful fear and helpless hatred, the wonderful truth 
burst upon Robert, and he danced gleefully, full of cruel 
triumph, about the black, suddenly impotent figure, 
shouting : 

“You can’t — you’re dead — you’re dead — you can’t 



And then he would wake up with a hideous start, sweat- 


THE DARK HOUSE 


37 


ing, his eyes hot with unshed tears, and Christine’s hand 
would come to him out of the darkness and clasp his in 
reassuring firmness. 

There was another dream. Or, rather, it was half a 
dream and half one of these stories that he told himself 
just before he fell asleep. It came to him at dusk when 
he stood at the gate and waited for Christine to come 
home. In the long day of silent games he had lost touch, 
little by little, with reality. Hunger had made him faint 
and drowsy. Things changed, became unfamiliar, fan- 
tastic. Between the stunted trees he could see the after- 
glow of the sunset like the reflection of a blazing city. 
The road then was full of silence and shadow. The drab 
outlines grew faint and the mean houses were merged into 
the vaster shapes of night. Robert waited, motionless, 
breathless. He was sure that something was coming to 
him down the path of fading light. He did not know 
what it was. Once, indeed, it had been Francey, with her 
queer dancing step, her hair flying about her head like a 
flock of little red-brown birds. She had hovered before 
him, on tiptoe, as though the next gust of wind would 
blow her on her way down the street, and looked at him. 
They had not spoken, but he had seen in her eyes how 
sorry she was that she had not understood. And a warm 
content had flowed over him. All the sore, aching places 
were healed and comforted. 

But that had been only once. And then he wasn’t 
sure that he hadn’t made it up. At aU other times the thing 
was outside himself too strange to have been imagined. 
It shook him from head to foot with dread and longing. 
He wanted to run to meet it, to plunge into it, reckless 
and shouting, as into a warm, dancing, summer sea. And 
yet it menaced him. It was of fire and colour, of the 
rumble and thud of armies, of laughter and singing and 
distant broken music. It was aU just round the corner. 
If he hurried he would see it, lose himself in it, march to 
the tune he could never quite catch. But he was afraid, 
and whilst he tried to make up his mind the light faded. 


38 


THE DARK HOUSE 


The sounds died. After all, it was only Christine, trudg- 
ing wearily through the dusk. 

§2 

The six forms were marshalled in squares down the 
centre of the drill-hall. Form I, with Robert Stonehouse 
at the bottom, holding the place of dishonour under the 
shadow of the Headmaster’s rostrum. Robert did not 
know that he was at the bottom of Form I, or that such 
a thing as Form I existed. He did not know that he 
was older than the eldest of his class-mates, but he was 
aware of being unusually and uncomfortably large. Under 
the curious stare that had greeted him on his first appear- 
ance and which now pressed on him from the rear and 
sides, he felt himself shoot up, inch by inch, into a horrible 
conspicuousness, whilst his feet grew flat and leaden, and 
his hands were too swollen to squeeze into his trousers 
pockets. 

we have left undone those things which we ought 
to have done and we have done those things which we 
ought not to have done . . .” 

He wondered what they were saying. It sounded rather 
like one of those tongue-twisters which his father had 
taught him in a playful moment — “round the rugged rock 
the ragged robber ran” — but it was evidently no joking 
matter. And it was something which everyone knew ex- 
cept himself. The urchin on his left piped it out in an 
assured, self-satisfied treble. The clergyman kneeling 
behind the raised desk came in with a bang at the begin- 
ning of each sentence, and then subsided into an indis- 
tinguishable murmur. Evidently he knew what he was 
saying so well that he did not need even to think about it, 
for his eyes wandered over his folded hands as though in 
methodical search for somebody. They reached Form I, 
and Robert, who saw them coming, broke instinctively 
into a panic-stricken gabble. Of all the poems which 
Christine had read aloud to him Casabianca was the only 


THE DARK HOUSE 


39 


one he could remember, and he had got as far as “whence 
all but he had fled” before he saw that it was of no good. 
The subterfuge had been recognized. The clergyman had 
stopped praying and was gazing at him earnestly. Robert 
gazed back, fascinated and open-mouthed. 

“ . . . and there is no health in us . . 

But the strain of that encounter was too much for him. 
He tried to escape, first to the ceiling and finally to his 
boots. The stare pursued him, pointed at him. In a 
moment the whole school would be on his track. His 
eyes, rolling desperately to their corners, encountered a 
little dark man who had led in Form I and now stood side- 
ways on, so as to keep his charge under constant survey. 
Even in that moment of acute despair he arrested Robert’s 
attention. There was something odd about him — some- 
thing distressful and indignant. Whilst he prayed he 
made jerky, irritable movements which fluttered out the 
wings of his gown, so that with his sleek black hair and 
pointed face he looked like a large angry blackbird, 
trapped and tied by the foot. 

“But Thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us . . .” 

And then, suddenly, an amazing conviction broke upon 
Robert. The little man wasn’t praying at all. His lips 
moved, but the movement was all wrong. He was repeat- 
ing two words, over and over again, at great speed and 
with a suppressed violence. They looked familiar — pain- 
fully, elusively familiar. Robert felt that in another 
moment he would recognize them: 

“ . . . spare Thou them that are penitent . . .” 

Now Robert knew for certain. It was his father’s 
favourite answer to all expostulations. Of course that 
was it. “Damned rot — damned rot — damned rot.” The 
little man was swearing passionately to himself. It was 
incredible, but there was no mistake possible. And in 
the full blast of the discovery his dark eyes, hunted and 
angry-looking behind their round glasses, met Robert’s, 
widened, passed on, and came back again. It was an ex- 
traordinary moment. Robert could not have looked away 


THE DARK HOUSE 


4Q 

to save his life. He knew that he had betrayed himself. 
The little man knew that he knew. He grew very red, 
coughed, and blew his nose violently, his eyes meantime 
returning repeatedly to Robert’s flushed and frightened 
face with an expression utterly unfathomable. It was 
almost as though he were trying to signal 

“Amen!” declared the whole school with infinite relief 
and satisfaction. 

The clergyman sighed deeply and raised himself pain- 
fully from his knees. 

“H 3 rmn number 503.” 

A boy came out from the class next to Robert’s and 
walked to the piano, and Robert forgot everything else, 
even his own imminent disgrace. He had never seen such 
red hair before — deep red with a touch of purple, like 
the leaves of a beech tree in autumn — or such a freckled 
face. The freckles lay thick on the small unimportant 
nose and clashed painfully against the roots of the amaz- 
ing hair. They crowded out the flaxen eyebrows alto- 
gether. And yet he was pretty in a wistful, whimsical 
sort of way. He made Robert want to laugh. Someone 
close to Robert did titter, and muttered, “Go it, Carrots !” 
and Robert saw that the boy had heard and was horribly 
frightened. He winced and faltered, and Robert poked 
out viciously with his elbow. 

“Shut up I” he whispered. 

His victim was too astonished even to retaliate. 

The red-haired boy had reached the piano. And at 
once a change came over him. He wasn’t frightened any 
more. He played the first verse over without a stumble, 
calmly, confidently, as though he knew that now no one 
had the right to laugh. The light from an upper window 
made a halo of his blazing head and lit up his small round 
face, faintly and absurdly grave, but with something elfish 
and eager lurking behind the gravity. Robert stared at 
him as an Ancient Briton might have stared at the first 
lordly Roman who crossed his ken. He felt uncouth and 


THE DARK HOUSE 41 

cumbersome and stupid. And yet he could have knocked 
the red-headed boy down easily with one hand. 

The clergyman led the singing. The urchin on Robert’s 
right had produced a hymn-book from his pocket and 
opened it and found his place with the same air of smug 
efficiency. Robert had no book. He longed for one. 
He knew that the clergyman was watching him again. 
His companion nudged him, and by a stab of a stumpy, 
inky forefinger indicated the verse which he himself was 
singing in an aggressive treble. But Robert only stared 
helplessly. At another time he might have recognized 
“God — love — dove — ” and other words of one syllable, 
and he liked the tune. But now he could see nothing but 
the clergyman and think of nothing but the little dark 
man. He wondered madly what the latter was singing 
now and whether he had managed to fit in “damned rot — 
damned rot” to the music. But he did not dare to look. 

A second prod roused him with a ghastly self-betraying 
start. 

“You gutter sing,” the small boy whispered fiercely; 
“gotter sing, id jit.” 

“Wh-a-a-t.?” 

Robert made a loud, unexpected noise in his throat. 
His companion choked, spluttered and buried his imperti- 
nent face in a grubby handkerchief. The dark man left 
his post hastily and stationed himself immediately at 
Robert’s side in anticipation of a further outbreak. Some- 
one in the rear giggled hysterically. Robert dropped his 
head and riveted his swimming eyes on the clergyman’s 
boots. He made no further attempt to save himself. He 
was caught by his mysterious, relentless destiny. He had 
been found out. 

§3 

Mr. Morton, the headmaster, believed in Hygiene and 
the Educational Value of Beauty. The classroom smelt 
vividly of carbolic. There was a large lithograph of “Love 
and Life” on the pure white wall and a pot of flowers on 


42 


THE DARK HOUSE 


the high window-sill. Maps, blackboards and all other 
paraphernalia of learning were kept in merciful con- 
cealment. 

Robert took possession of the desk nearest him and 
was at once ejected. Its rightful owner scowled darkly 
at him. At the next desk he tried to anchor himself, and 
there was a scuffle and a smothered exchange of blows, 
from which he escaped with a scraped shin and a strange, 
unfamiliar sense of being afraid. There was no fight in 
him. He didn’t want to fight. He wanted to belong — to 
be one of the herd — and he knew dimly that he would first 
have to learn its laws and submit to its tortures. He tried 
to grin back when the titter, which seemed endemic, broke 
out afresh as he stumbled on his ignominious pilgrimage, 
but the unasked-for partition in their amusement seemed 
to exasperate them. They whispered things to one an- 
other. They commented on his clothes. He realized 
suddenly how poorly dressed he was. There was a patch 
on the knee of his trousers and a mended tear on his shiny 
jacket. His finger-nails weren’t very clean. Christine had 
gone off too early to be sure that he had done them, and 
he had never thought much of that sort of thing. Now he 
was parMysed with shame. He could feel the tears 
strangling him. 

Fortunately the desk in the far comer belonged to 
nobody. It was old and battered and covered with the 
undecipherable carvings of his predecessors, but at once 
he loved it. It was his. Its retired position seemed to 
offer him protection. He hid behind it, drawing a long, 
shuddering sigh of thankfulness. 

The little dark man stood on the raised platform and 
surveyed them all. His expression was nearly a grimace ; 
as though he had just swallowed a disagreeable medicine. 
He pursed his lips and held tight to the lapels of his coat, 
his piercing yet distressful eyes blinking rapidly behind 
their glasses with a kind of nervous malice. 

‘‘Well, my delightful and learned young friends 

The class wilted in anticipation. But before he spoke 


THE DARK HOUSE 


43 


again the door opened and they rose thankfully with a 
shuffle of feet and surreptitious clatter of desks. The 
clergyman waved to them. If the little dark man was 
like a blackbird, captive and resentful, the newcomer was 
like a meagre and somewhat fluttered hen. His hands 
and wrists were long and yellow and sinewy. He wore no 
culfs, but one could see the beginnings of his Jaeger under- 
vest under the black sleeve. He rubbed his chin or 
smoothed the back of his small head almost ceaselessly. 

‘‘You can sit down, boys. One moment, Mr. Ricardo, 
one moment only 

He spoke in an undertone. Robert knew it was about 
him. They both looked in his direction. The little man 
jerked his head. 

“Robert Stonehouse.” 

He sat motionless, trying to hide from them. But it was 
of no good. The clergyman made an elevating gesture, 
and he rose automatically as though he were tied to that 
gentleman’s hand by an invisible string. The desk was 
much too small for him and he had to wiggle to get free 
from it. The lid banged. Instantly every boy had 
turned in his seat to gaze at him, and he saw that this 
was the worst place that could have fallen to his lot. In 
his corner he was trapped, a sea of mocking, curious faces 
between him and his tormentors. 

The clergyman smiled palely at him. 

“I understand that you are a new boy, Stonehouse, and 
I don’t wish to be too severe with you. At the same time 
we must begin as we are to go on. And you were not 
behaving very well at prayers this morning, were you.?^” 

Robert moved his lips soundlessly. But no answer was 
expected of him. The question was rhetorical. “You 
weren’t,” the enemy said, “attending. You were trying 

to make your companions laugh ” This, at least, was 

unbearably unjust. 

“I wasn’t,” Robert interrupted loudly. 

Someone moved to compassion hissed, “Say ‘sir’ — say 


44 < 


THE DARK HOUSE 


sir,’ ” but he was beyond help. From that moment on he 
was beyond fear. He dug himself in, dogged and defiant. 

“Come now, Stonehouse, I saw you myself. You were 
only pretending to join in, now weren’t you.'^ How was it.^ 
Didn’t you know the prayer.'*” 

“No.” 

“Don’t be so abrupt, my boy. Say ‘sir’ when you 
answer me. How is it that you don’t know it.? You go 
to church, don’t you.?” 

“No.” 

“Say ‘sir.’ ” 

“Sir.” 

“Well, chapel, then. You go to chapel, no doubt?” 

Robert stared blankly. 

“You don’t? But surely your mother takes you ” 

“I haven’t got a mother.” His voice sounded in his own 
ears like a shout. He scowled down at the faces nearest 
him. He was ready to fight them now. If they were go- 
ing to say anything about his mother, good or bad, he 
would fly at them, just as he had flown at his old aggres- 
sors in the Terrace, regardless of size and numbers. 

“Your father, then?” 

“I haven’t got a father.” 

His questioner smiled faintly, not without asperity. 

“Come, come, you are not yet a gentleman in indepen- 
dent circumstances. Who takes care of you?” 

“Christine.” 

“And who, pray, is Christine?” 

Who was Christine? It was as though suddenly the 
comer of a curtain had been raised for a moment, letting 
him look through into a strange new country. 

“I don’t know.” 

The clergyman waved his hand, damping down the 
titters that spluttered up nervously, threatening to ex- 
plode outright. He himself had an air of slight dishevel- 
ment, as though his ideas had been blown about by a rude 
wind. 

“I remember — Mr. Morton spoke to me — ^your guar- 


THE DARK HOUSE 


45 


dian, of course. You should answer properly. But still, 
surely you have been taught — some religious instruction. 
You say your prayers, don’t you.?*” 

‘‘No.” He added after a moment of sudden, vivid 
recollection: “Not now.” 

It was nothing short of a debacle. He had pulled out 
the keystone of an invisible edifice which had come tum- 
bling about their ears, leaving him in safety. Without 
knowing how or why, he knew he had got the better of 
them all. The grins died out of the upturned faces. 
They looked at him with amazement, with horror, yes — 
with respect. 

“But you have been taught your catechism — to — to 
believe in God?” 

“No.” 

“But the hymn — at least you could have sung the 
hymn, my poor boy. You can read, can’t you?” 

“No.” 

The awe passed before a storm of unchecked laughter. 
For one spectacular moment he had held them all help- 
less, every one of them, by the sheer audacity of his 
admissions. Now with one word he had fallen — an 
ignominious, comic outcast. The clergyman turned 
away, shaken but satisfied. 

“You have a great deal to learn. I doubt if Mr. 

Morton quite realized A heavy task in front of you, 

too, Mr. Ricardo. One word, please ” 

They spoke in undertones. Robert slid back into his 
seat. He could feel exultant glances sting and pierce him 
on every side. And yet when the door closed he had to 
look up. He was driven by a relentless curiosity to meet 
the worst. Mr. Ricardo had resumed his place. He did 
not so much as glance at Robert. He clung on to the 
lapels of his coat and blinked up at the window as though 
nothing had happened. But there was something impish 
twitching at the corners of his nervous mouth. 

“My delightful young friends,” he said, “you will be 
kind enough to leave Stonehouse in peace both now and 


46 


THE DARK HOUSE 


hereafter. I know your amiable propensities, and my 
own conviction is that he is probably worth the pack of 

you. Get out your history books 

So he was a friend. A powerful friend. But not pow- 
erful enough. No one looked at Robert again. And yet 
he knew, with all the certainty of inherited instinct, that 
they were waiting for him. 

§4 

He went out into the school-yard like an early Christian 
into the arena. He knew exactly what to expect. It was 
just the Terrace over again. He would have to fight them 
all until they learnt to leave him alone. Somehow he 
knew for certain that to be left alone was the best he could 
expect. They would never really forgive him for being 
different from themselves. It was very mysterious. It 
couldn’t be his father or the unpaid bills any more. It 
seemed that if you were born different you remained 
different, however hard you tried. He had wanted so 
much to go to school, to run with a band again, to play 
games with them and have them call out, ‘‘Hallo, Stone- 
house!” as he heard other boys caU to each other across 
the street. He had meant to be exactly like them at all 
costs. It had seemed so easy, since his father was dead 
and Christine paid the butcher. But at once he had been 
found out, a marked man. He hadn’t got a father and 
mother like ordinary people, he didn’t go to church, he 
didn’t say his prayers, he couldn’t read, and he didn’t 
know who God was — or even Christine 

There was a moment of suspense before the attack 
opened. Like an old, experienced general he made his 
way with apparent indifference towards the wall. But he 
was not quite quick enough. Someone prodded him 
sharply in the back. Someone hissed in mocking imi- 
tation : 

“I don’t know — I don’t know!” 

He was too cunning to retaliate. He waited till he had 
reached his chosen ground, then he turned with his fists 


THE DARK HOUSE 


47 


clenched. The storm had already gathered. It was only 
a little school, and the story of the new boy^s “break” with 
old Jaegers had reached even the big louts who lingered 
on in Form VI. They made a rough half-circle round 
their intended victim, only partially malevolent in their 
intentions. The fact that he had bearded a contemptible 
old beast like Jaegers was rather in his favour than other- 
wise, but his assertion that he did not say his prayers and 
knew nothing about God smacked of superiority. He had 
to be taken down. And, anyhow, a new boy was an object 
of curiosity and his preliminary persecution a time- 
honoured custom. A fight was not in their calculations — 
the very idea of a new boy venturing to fight beyond their 
imaginations. And Robert did not want to fight. He 
felt oddly weary and disinclined. But to him there was 
no other outcome possible. It was his only tradition. It 
blinded him to what was kindly or only mischievous in 
the faces round him. He had a momentary glimpse of 
the red-headed boy who stood just outside the circle, 
munching an apple and staring at him with astonished 
blue eyes, and then his attention fixed itself on his enemy- 
in-chief. There was no mistaking him. He was a big, 
lumpy fellow, fifteen years of age, with an imtidy mouth, 
the spots of a premature adolescence and an air of heavy 
self-importance. When he spoke, the rest feU into awed 
attention. 

“Hallo, new kid, what^s your name?” 

“Robert Stonehouse.” 

“Don’t be so abrupt, my boy,” — a delighted titter from 
the small fry — ^“say ^sir’ when you answer me.” 

“I shan’t.” 

The little colourless eyes widened in sheer incredulity. 
For a moment the role of humorist was forgotten. 

“Look here — no cheek, or I’ll smack your head.” 

“He hasn’t been properly brought up,” one of the 
spotty youth’s companions remarked, not ill-naturedly. 
“Can’t expect him to have manners. He never had a 
father or a mother, poor darling ” 


48 


THE DARK HOUSE 


“Then where did he come from?’^ 

“God made him.” 

“He told old Jaegers he’d never even heard of God.” 

“Dear, dear, what a naughty boy. He doesn’t even 
say his prayers.” 

“But he lives with a lady called Christine ” 

“How nice for him. Is she a pretty lady, Stonehouse 

Up till now nothing had stirred in him. He hadn’t 
cared. He had indeed felt something of the superiority 
which they suspected in him. If that was aU they could 

(Jo Now, suddenly, the blood rushed to the roots of 

his fair hair. 

“Shut up. You leave Christine alone.” 

The big boy was too delighted to be angry. 

“Hoity-toity. She must be a high-stepper. No tres- 
passers allowed — eh, what.? young cockalorum. Come on, 
what’s she like.? Who is she.? 

“He doesn’t know.” 

“She isn’t his mother.” 

“He says she isn’t.” 

“P’r’aps he doesn’t know that either, P’r’aps that’s 
what she says ” 

The full extent of the innuendo, like the majority of the 
audience, he did not understand, but he saw the wink 
which passed between the two elder boys. Ever since that 
day when he had gathered flowers for his mother in Kensal 
Green Cemetery he had known of dark things, just beyond 
his understanding. He had wandered in the midst of 
them too long not to be aware of them on the instant. 
And it was against Christine — who had suffered from them 

so terribly — they dared A great sigh tore itself free 

from him. He put his head down. He flew at the spotty 
youth like a stone from a catapult, and they went down 
together in a cloud of dust. 

After that, as in most of his uneven, desperate en- 
counters, he hardly knew what happened. He felt noth- 
ing. In reality it was an absurd spectacle. The spotty 


THE DARK HOUSE 


49 


youth, bounding' up from his momentary discomfiture, 
caught Robert by the collar and smacked him shamefully, 
severely, as the outrage merited. And when justice had 
been satisfied, he released the culprit, and Robert, without 
pause, returned, fighting with fists and feet and teeth, 
as he had learnt to do from dire necessity. It was un- 
precedented. The spotty youth gasped. His companions 
offered intervention. 

“I’ll hold the beggar.’^ 

But honour was at stake. The small fry, startled out 
of caution, were tittering in hysterical excitement. 

“Th-thanks — ^you keep out of it — I’ll manage him.’^ 

The second beating was more drastic. The third was 
ineffectual. The spotty youth, besides being exhausted, 
was demoralized with sheer bewilderment. He was not 
clever, and when events ran out of their ruts he lost his 
head. He had made the same discovery that the Terrace 
boys had made long since, namely that short of killing 
Robert Stonehouse there was no way of beating him, and 
he drew back, panting, dishevelled, his manly collar limp 
and his eyes wild. 

“There — that’ll teach you ” 

Robert laughed. He put his tongue out. He knew 
it was vulgar but it was the only retaliation he had breath 
for. His clothes were dusty and torn, his nose bloody. 
He was a frightful object. But he knew that he had won. 

The spotty youth wiped his hands on his handkerchief 
with exaggerated disgust. 

“Dirty little beast. I wouldn’t touch him again — not 
with the end of a barge pole.” 

He never did. Nobody did. Though he did not know 
it, it was Robert’s last fight. But he had won immunity at 
a high cost. The small fry skirted him as they went out 
through the school gates. It was more than fear. They 
distrusted him. He was not one of them. He did not 
keep their laws. His wickedness was not their wickedness, 
his courage not their courage. He ought not to have 
fought a boy in the sixth form. He ought to have taken 


50 


THE DARK HOUSE 


his beating quietly. Even if he had “blubbed” they might | 
afterwards have taken him to their bosoms in understand- j 
ing and inarticulate sympathy. As it was, he was a devil 
— a foreign devil, outside the caste for ever. 

Only the small red-haired boy, waiting cautiously till 
everyone else was out of sight, came after him as he 
trailed forlornly down the street. He was still chewing 
meditatively at the core of his apple, and his eyes, vividly 
blue amidst the freckles, considered Robert out of their 
comers "with solemn astonishment. 

“I say, Stonehouse, you can fight.” 

Robert nodded. He was still breathless. 

“I — I’m used to it.” 

“I’m glad you kicked that beast Saunders. You hurt 
him, too. I saw him make a face. I wish I could fight 
like that. But I’m no good at it. I’m not ’fraid — not 
really — but I just hate it. You like it, don’t you.?’^ 

Robert swaggered a little. 

“Rather.” 

There was a moment’s sUence. 

“I say — if you like it — would you mind licking Dickson 
Minor for me.?^ He’s always ragging me — you see, I’ve 
a rotten time — because of my hair, and about playing the 
piano. Dickson’s the worst. I’d be awfully glad, if you 
. wouldn’t mind, of course.” 

Robert surreptitiously wiped the blood from his nose 
on to his sleeve. As usual he had no handkerchief. A 
warm, delicious solace flowed over his battered spirit. His 
heart sw^elled till it hurt him. It opened wide to the little 
red-haired boy. If only Francey could see him now — the 
defender of the oppressed. But he did not dare to think 
of that. After all, he might cry. 

He nodded negligently. 

“All right. I don’t mind.” 

“P’r’aps, when he knows you’re standing up for me, 
he’ll leave me alone.” 

“He’d better.” 

“My name’s Rufus — Rufus Cosgrave. You see, I was 


THE DARK HOUSE 


51 


born like this, and my father thought it would be a good 
joke. I call it beastly.” 

“Mine’s Robert.” 

The red-haired boy meditated a little longer. He 
rubbed his arm against Robert’s softly like a young pony. 

“I say, let’s be friends — shall we?” 

Robert gulped and turned his head away. 

“All right. I don’t mind.” 

They parted shyly at the corner of Cosgrave’s road 
— a neat double file of vastly superior villas, as Robert 
realized with a faint sinking of the heart; but Robert 
did not go home. He made his way out to the dingy 
fields behind the biscuit factory, and watched the local 
rag and bobtail play football, lying hidden in the long 
grass under the wall so that they should not see him and 
fall upon him. Even when it grew dusk and he knew 
that Christine must be almost home, he still wandered 
about the streets. He was hungry and footsore, his head 
and body ached, but he put off the moment when he would 
have to face her to the very last. He loved her, and he 
was not really afraid, though he knew that the sight of 
his torn, blood-stained clothes would rouse her to a queer 
unreasonable despair; but he had talked so much, so 
proudly and so confidently of going to school. And now, 

1 how should he tell the tale of his disgrace, how make clear 
1 to her the misery which the unfathomable gulf between 
himself and his companions caused in him, or that because 
a red-haired, freckled small boy had asked him to fight 
Dickson Minor he had lain in the grass with his face 
hidden in his arms and wept tears of sacred happiness? 

I There were things you could never tell, least of all to 
people whom you loved. . They were locked up in you, and 
the key had been lost long since. 

The street lamps came to life one by one. He strolled 
down Acacia Grove, whistling and swinging his legs with 
an exaggerated carelessness. He could see their light in 
the upper window of No. 14. He was sure that Christine 
would watch for him, and when the hall door opened 


52 


THE DARK HOUSE 


suddenly, he stopped short, shrinking from their en- 
counter. But it was a man who came out of the gate 
towards him. For one moment an awful, reasonless terror 
made him half turn to run, to run headlong, never to come 
back; the next, he recognized the slight, jerky limp which 
made his form master so comically bird-like, and stood 
still, knowing that now Christine had heard everything, 
the very worst. Probably Mr. Ricardo had come to tell 
her that she must take him away, that he was too bad 
and too stupid to be with other boys, and a lump gathered 
in his throat because he would never see Rufus Cosgrave 
again: never fight for him. 

Mr. Ricardo halted, peering through the dusk. 

“That you, Stonehouse.?^’’ 

“Yes” — he added painfully, because the little man had 
been kind to him — “sir.” 

“Your — Miss Forsyth is getting anxious about you. 
Why are you so late.f^” 

Robert muttered “Football,” knowing it was a lie, and 
that somehow or other his companion knew it too. He 
heard Mr. Ricardo sigh deeply and wearily. 

“Well, I’m very late myself. I don’t know this neigh- 
bourhood. Is there a station or a ’bus near here.^”’ 

“There’s a ’bus.” Robert pointed eagerly. “I’ll show 
you if you like.” 

“Thanks — if it doesn’t take you too long.” 

They walked side by side in silence, Mr. Ricardo’s 
stick tapping smartly on the pavement, he himself appar- 
ently deep in thought. It seemed to Robert that he had 
escaped, until suddenly a thin hand took him by the shoul- 
der and shook him with a friendly impatience. 

“Football. Nonsense. A boy like you doesn’t play 
football. He hasn’t had the chance. Besides, it’s not 
his line. He plays a lone game. No. You’ve been 
moping round — crying possibly. Well, I do that myself 
sometimes. It’s a crying business, unless you’ve got nerves 
and guts. But you’ve got that all right. I saw you fight 
that stupid bully Saunders from my window, and you 


THE DARK HOUSE 


53 


beat him, too. I was fighting with you, though you 
didn’t know it. It was I who kicked lum that time you 
caught him on the shin.” 

Robert would have laughed had he been less miserable, 
and had he not caught beneath Mr. Ricardo’s brief amuse- 
ment a real and angry satisfaction. In the dark, too, he 
had an uneasy feeling that after all he was going to be 
found out. 

‘‘And then after you’d stood up to and beaten a fellow 
twice your size you went away by yourself and howled. 
Shall I tell you why? You’ll be astonished. Probably 
you won’t understand in the least. You cried because 
you’re a young idiot. You find yourself in a herd of 
half-baked living creatures, and you see that they are 
wearing chains round their ankles and rings through their 
noses so that they can’t move or breathe properly, and 
you think to yourself that that’s the proper thing, and 
you come crying home for someone to tie you up like 
the rest. It’s natural. It’s the race instinct and has had 
its uses. But it’s dangerous. It kills most of us. We 
start out with brains to use and eyes to see with and hands 
to make with and we end up by thinking nothing and see- 
ing nothing and making nothing that hasn’t been thought 
and seen and made for the last two thousand years. Most 
of us, even when we know what is happening to us, are 
cowed and blackmailed into surrender. We have to com- 
promise — there are circumstances — always circumstances 
— unless we are very strong — ^we give in — ^beaten out of 
shape ” 

His sentences, that had become painful and disjointed, 
broke off, and there was another silence. Robert could 
say nothing. He was dazed with the many words, half 
of which, it was true, he had not understood at all. And 
yet they excited him. They seemed to pierce through and 
touch some sleeping thing in himself which stirred and 
answered: “Yes, yes, that’s true — that’s true.” 

The pressure on his shoulders increased a little. 


54 THE DARK HOUSE 

“But you’re not afraid of anything, are you, Stone- 
house?” 

“No — no, sir. I don’t think so — not really ” 

“I don’t think you are, either. I liked the way you 
stood up to that poor faggot of hereditary superstitions 
and prejudices who was trying to frighten you into being 
as big a humbug as himself. He’ll never get over it. I 
daresay he’ll make things very unpleasant for you in his 
charming Christian way. How old are you, Stonehouse?” 

“Ten — nearly, sir.” 

“You’re big and precocious for your age. You’ll get 
the better of him. But if you’d been brought up with 
other children you’d have whined and cringed — ‘Yes, sir,’ 
‘No, sir’ — and been a beastly canting hypocrite all your 
life. You’re wonderfully lucky if you only knew it. Stone- 
house. You’re nearly ten, and you can’t read and you 
don’t say your prayers and your catechism and you know 
nothing about God Almighty. You’ve a sporting chance 
of becoming a man ” 

Robert stumbled over his own feet. A deeper, almost 
overpowering, tiredness had come over him. And yet he 
was fascinated. He had to try to understand. 

“Isn’t there — I mean — isn’t there- anyone like God?” 

Mr. Ricardo stopped short. He made a strange, wild 
gesture. Standing there in the half-darkness he was more 
than ever like some poor hobbled bird trying desperately, 
furiously to beat its way back to freedom. 

“Superstition — superstition, Stonehouse — the most 
crushing, damnable chain of all, the symbol of cowardice, 
of greed and vanity, the enemy of truth and knowledge, 
the hot-bed on which we breed the miserable half-men who 
cumber this earth, a pitiable myth ” 

He had almost shouted. It was as though he had been 
addressing a vast audience. His voice dropped now, and 
he walked on, peering about him anxiously. 

“Well — weU, you are too young. There are things you 
can’t understand. But I shall teach you. No, there is no 
God, Stonehouse.” 


THE DARK HOUSE 


55 


Robert was vaguely sorry. It was true that he had no 
clear idea of God, and yet in some way He had been mixed 
up with the bands and music and marching crowds that 
were always just round the corner. In his expansive, 
genial moments, so rare towards the end. Dr. Stonehouse 
had been known to say, “God bless you, Christine,” and 
that had always meant a few hours’ peace. It seemed very 
sad. 

“What are you going to be, Stonehouse.?” 

“A doctor, sir.” 

“Why.?” 

It was impossible to tell the whole truth — namely, 
that because Francey had said she was to be a doctor 
he had said he would be one too, and a better one at that. 
He gave half-measure. 

“I want to be.” 

“Well, that’s a good reason. It might be a great pro- 
fession, but it has its liars and tricksters like the rest. It is 
eaten up by little men who wrap themselves in priestly 
garments and hide their ignorance behind oracular si- 
lences. They play up to the superstitious weakness of the 
mob, and replace one religion by another. They don’t 
care what beastly misery and evil they keep alive so long 
as they can pull off their particular little stimts. You 
mustn’t be like that, Stonehouse. To be free — to be free 
— and strong enough to go one’s way and trample down 
the people who try to turn you aside; that is the only 
thing worth while. Don’t let them catch you, Stone- 
house. You don’t know how cunning they can be — cun- 
ning and cruel.” 

He sighed again, and Robert did not try to answer. 
He had given up all hope of understanding, and his tired- 
ness was now such that he had to set his teeth to keep the 
tears back. At the comer they waited in silence watching 
the jolly, yellow-eyed ’bus rumble towards them down the 
High Street. 

“Your guardian will tell you what we have arranged,” 
Mr. Ricardo said abruptly and with a complete change of 


56 


THE DARK HOUSE 


tone, “In a month you will read better than any of them. 
As to the rest, you will have to compromise. So long as 
you know what you are doing and don’t humbug yourself, 
there’s no harm done. With the necessity you will shake 
yourself free. You can say, ‘I believe in God the Father 
Almighty’ with your lips and in your heart, as I do, 
‘damned rot — damned rot.’ ” 

He laughed, and in the lamplight Robert saw his face, 
puckered with an impish, malicious merriment. Robert 
laughed too. So he had guessed right. He felt proud 
and pleased. 

“Good night, Stonehouse.” 

“Good night, sir.” 

Robert took off his battered cap politely as did other 
boys. Mr. Ricardo scrambled into the ’bus with an un- 
expected agility, and from the bright interior in which he 
sat a huddled, faceless shadow, he waved. Robert waved 
back. A fresh rush of elation had lifted him out of his 
sorrowful weariness. His disgrace had been miraculously 
turned to a kind of secret triumph. He was different ; but 
then, how different! He didn’t wear chains or a ring 
through his nose. He was going to know things that no 
one else knew. And one day he would be big and free. 

§5 

It did not last. By the time he had dragged himself 
up to the top of their stairs there was nothing left but 
hunger, the consciousness of tattered, blood - stained 
clothes, and a sore, tired body. After all, he was only 
a small boy who had wanted to play with other boys, 
and had been cast out. Even Mr. Ricardo could never 
make them play with him. 

It was dark in the sitting-room. Against the grey, 
ghostly light of the window he could see Christine bowed 
over her typewriter. She was so still that she frightened 
him. All the terrors of night which lay in wait for him 
ever since his father’s dead hand had touched his door and 


THE DARK HOUSE 


57 


opened it, rushed down upon him with a sweep of black, 
smothering wings. He called out “Christine ! Christine !” 
in a choked voice, and she moved at once, and he saw her 
profile, sharp-drawn and unfamiliar, 

“Is that you, Robert? What is it, dear?” 

So she had not been worrying about him at all. She did 
not know that it was long past their usual supper-time. 
She had been thinking of something else. It made her 
seem a terrifyingly long way off, and he shuffled across the 
room to her, and touched her to make sure of her.' And 
it was strange that her hand glided over him anxiously, 
questioningly, as though in the darkness she too had been 
afraid and uncertain. 

“Your form-master, Mr. Ricardo, has been here. We’ve 
been talking about you. Is your coat very, very tom?” 

“Not — not very.” 

“Never mind. I’ll mend it afterwards — when you’ve 
gone to bed.” 

Because he was so tired himself the imutterable weari- 
ness in her voice smote him on the heart unbearably. He 
had never heard it before. It made him think of her, for 
the first time, not just as Christine, who looked after him 
and loved him, but as someone apart whom, perhaps, he 
did not know at all. Hadn’t they asked him, “Who is 
Christine?” And he hadn’t answered. He hadn’t known. 

“Mr. Ricardo says you will need a lot of help to pick 
up with the other boys. Poor little Robert ! But he takes 
an interest in you, and you are to go to his house in the 
afternoon to be coached, and in a few weeks you will know 
as much as any of them.” 

He did not know what “coaching” meant, but all of a 
sudden he had become afraid of Mr. Ricardo. He did not 
want to go to him. He knew that Mr. Ricardo would 
not like him to play with other boys, even if he got a 
chance. He would want him to be alone and different al- 
ways. 

“He doesn’t believe in God,” Robert asserted accus- 
ingly. “He said he didn’t.” 


68 


THE DARK HOUSE 


“Perhaps not, dear.” 

“Doesn’t that matter?” 

“I don’t suppose God minds — if He exists.” 

“Don’t you believe in Him, Christine?” 

“I don’t know. People say they believe too easily. I 
expect I believe as much a's the others. With most of us 
it’s just — ^just a hope.” 

They had never talked together in that way before. • 
It made her more than ever someone apart from him, 
who had her own thoughts, and perhaps her own secret 
way of being unhappy. He was frightened again, not 
of the darkness now, but of something nearer — some- 
thing so real and deadly that the old spectres became 
almost comic, like ghosts made up of dust-sheets and 
broom-handles. Supposing Christine went still further 
from him — supposing she left him altogether alone? She 
wouldn’t do it of her free will, but there were things people 
couldn’t help. People died. The thought was a cruel 
hand twining itself into the strings of his heart. He tried 
to see her face. Was she young? He didn’t know. He 
had never thought about it. She had been grown-up. 
That covered everything. Now in the pale, unreal light 
her face and hair were a strange dead gray, and she was 
old— old. 

“Christine, how — ^how long do people live?” 

“It depends. Sometimes to a hundred — sometimes just 
a minute. 

“But if one is careful, Christine — ^I mean, really care- 
ful?” 

“It doesn’t always help, Robert. And even if it did, the 

people who need to live most have to take risks ” She 

broke off, following her thought further till it was far 
beyond his reach. “In fifteen years you will be grown up. 
You will be able to take care of yourself. Wbat will 
you be then?” 

“A doctor,” he said firmly; “and I’ll look after you, 
Christine, and you’ll live for ever and ever.” 

“A doctor — a doctor!” She seemed startled, almost 


THE DARK HOUSE 


59 


frightened. ^‘Yes, of course. Your father would want it. 
He was always proud of his profession, though he made 
fun. But it will mean more — waiting a little longer.” 

She brooded, her hand covering her eyes, and he crept 
nearer to her, pressing himself against her arm, trjring 
to draw her back. 

‘‘Christine, who — ^who are you.^” 

“I don’t know, Robert, I don’t know 

“I mean — ^why do you look after me.^ You’re ncJt my 
mother.” 

“Why, I love you.” 

“But you didn’t at the beginning. You couldn’t have 
done.” 

“Your father and I were friends. Yes, always — al- 
ways — right through everything — to the very end. When 
your mother came into our lives, I loved her almost more. 
That will seem very strange to you one of these days, but 
it was true. When she was dying she asked me to take 
care of you both.” She drew herself up, and pushed the 
untidy wisps of hair out of her face, and with that gesture 
she seemed suddenly to grow vigorous and young. “Why, 
Robert, it’s better than if you were my own son; it’s as 
though in you I had a little of those two always with me.” 

“Christine, you won’t ever leave me, will you.^^” 

For now his fear had him by the throat. She didn’t — 
she never had belonged to him. It was his father and his 
mother, who were dead. 

“Of course not — ^not so long as you need me. You 
mustn’t worry. It’s because we’re both tired and hungry. 
We’ll get supper.” 

Her voice was its old self. But whilst she laid the 
cloth he stood pressed against the window and looked 
out with blind eyes into the darkness, so that she should 
not see his slow, hot tears. He was aware of great and 
bitter loss. But he loved Christine more than he had ever 
done. His love had ceased to be instinctive. It had be- 
come conscious of itself and of her separateness. And 
it would never be quite free again from pain. 


Ill 


§1 

T ONG before he could read words of three syllables, 
Robert had learnt the Origin of Man, and had made 
a vivid, somewhat fanciful picture of that personage^s 
pathetic beginnings as a miasm floating on the earth’s 
surface, and of his accidental, no less pathetic progres- 
sion as a Survival of the Fittest. He gathered that even 
more than old Jaegers, Mr. Ricardo hated God Almighty 
and Jesus Christ, the latter of whom was intimately con- 
nected with something called a Sun Myth — chiefly, Robert 
supposed, because He was the Son of God. Mr. Ricardo 
could not leave these two alone. He hunted them down, 
he badgered and worried them, he covered them with gibes 
and insults. It seemed to Robert sometimes that even the 
multiplication table was really a disguised missile hurled 
in their unsuspecting and non-existent faces. 

Mr. Ricardo appeared to have no friends. As far 
as Robert could make out, when he was not at school 
he sat at his desk in the untidy, stuify attic in the still 
more untidy, stuffy boarding-house where he lived, and 
wrote feverishly. What he wrote Robert did not know. 
There was an air of mystery about the whole business, 
as though he were concocting a deadly explosive which 
might go off at any moment. Sometimes he seemed elated, 
sometimes cast down by the results, but always doggedly 
resolved. 

“It is a long, hard struggle, Stonehouse,” he would 
say. “There are more fools in this world than you could 
conceive possible. Thank your stars your friend isn’t one 
of them. A fine, intelligent woman — a unique woman.” 

60 


THE DARK HOUSE 61 

He talked a good deal about Christine and women in 
general. 

«When once we can get them on our side,’^ was one of 
his dark sayings, “the last trench will be in our hands.’^ 

Then, one evening, to Robert’s astonished displeasure, 
he walked home with him, and somehow drifted up their 
dark stairs to the little sitting-room where Christine 
was laying supper. It appeared that he had come to give 
an account of his pupil’s progress, but he was oddly ex- 
cited, and when Christine invited him to share their meal 
— surely he could have seen there wasn’t enough to go 
round, Robert thought — he accepted with a transparent, 
childlike eagerness that made Robert stare at him as at 
a stranger. And after supper, with the self-conscious air 
of a man who has waited for this moment, he produced 
from his coat pocket a crumpled newspaper with the title 
Unshackled printed in aggressive letters on its pale-green 
cover. 

^‘In my leisure time I write a good deal on a subject 
very dear to me. Miss Forsyth,” he said and screwed up 
his sharp nose in a kind of nervous anguish. “I have here 
an article published last week — you are a broad-minded, 
intelligent woman — I thought perhaps it might interest 
you — if you would care to glance over it.” 

Christine lay back in her chair, her face in shadow. 
But the lamplight fell on her two hands. Red and mis- 
shapen as they were now, they were still noble hands, and 
their repose had dignity and beauty. 

“Won’t you read it to us, Mr. Ricardo.^ My eyes 
are tired at night.” 

He cleared his throat. 

“It is an answer to Bishop Crawford^s recent letter 
to The Times, which you may have seen. I have called 
it ‘Unmasking the Oracle.^ ” 

Robert leant out of the window and watched the sun 
sink into mist and smoke. He wished Mr. Ricardo hadn’t 
come, and that he would go away soon. In a few minutes 
the light would begin to die, and the sharp black lines of 


62 


THE DARK HOUSE 


the roofs and spires, which on the ruins of their dull selves 
seemed to be built anew into a witchlike fantastic city, 
would be lost to him for another night. Robert did not 
want to hear about God and the origin of man now. He 
kicked impatiently. Christine would sit up later than 
ever. And, besides with Mr. Ricardo’s voice rising and 
falling, growing shriller and more passionate, one could 
not listen to that low, mysterious hum that was so like a 
far-off music. 

Mr. Ricardo made a sweeping, crushing gesture. 

“That, surely, settles the controversy. He will hardly 
be able to answer that, I think.” 

Christine stirred, and opened her eyes, and smiled a 
little. 

“I could not answer it, at any rate. It sounds very 
clever.” She took the paper from him and held it to the 
light, and Robert turned, hoping that now he would really 
go. “But — but I didn’t quite understand — have I lost the 
place.? — this is by E. T. Richards.” 

Then Robert saw an astonishing thing. Suddenly 
Mr. Ricardo seemed to shrivel — to cower back into him- 
self. His fierce, triumphant energy had gone as at a 
blasting touch of magic. He looked ashamed and broken. 

“A nom de plume — a nom de guerre, rather. Miss 
Forsyth — you understand — in my opinion — the scho- 
lastic profession — the stronghold of the worst bigotry 
and prejudice — for myself I should not care — I have al- 
ways wanted to come out into the open — ^but I have 
a sister — poor girl! — a long, sad illness — for her sake — 
I can’t afford ” 

Christine folded the paper gently as though she were 
afraid of hurting it. 

“Of course. It would be unwise — unnecessary. Why 
should one sacrifice oneself to fight something that doesn’t 
exist.?” 

He clenched his fists. 

“One must fight error. Miss Forsyth.” 

“At any rate it’s brave of you to try— to do what you 


THE DARK HOUSE 


63 


think IS right.’^ And now it seemed she was trying to find 
something that would comfort him — just as she had once 
given Robert peppermint balls when he had hurt him- 
self. ‘‘If ever you feel inclined, won’t you come again — 
and read to us.^” 

He looked at her with dark, tragic eyes. 

“Thank you, thank you.” 

Robert went with him to the door, and for a moment 
he wavered on the steps, blinking, and squeezing his soft 
hat between his bony hands. 

“A great woman — a kind woman — you must be worth 
her while, Stonehouse.” 

And then, without so much as a “good night,” he limped 
down the steps and along the street, flitting in and out of 
the lamplight like a hunted bat. 

It was the first of many tiresome evening visits. But 
the next day he was always himself again, and the class 
wilted under his merciless, contemptuous sarcasms. Only 
Robert was not afraid. He knew that the lash would 
never come his way, and he could feel the little man’s un- 
spoken pride, when he showed himself quicker than his 
companions, like a secret Masonic pressure of the hand. 
And there was something else. It was a discovery that 
made him at first almost dizzy with astonishment. He 
wasn’t stupid. Just as he was stronger, so he was cleverer 
than boys older than himself. He could do things at once 
over which they botched and bungled. He outstripped 
them when he chose. Even his ignorance did not handi- 
cap him for long. For Mr. Ricardo had kept his promise. 
He taught well, and in those long afternoons in the hot 
boarding-house attic Robert had raced over the lost 
ground. He did not always want to work. He gazed 
out of the window, half his mind busy planning what he 
and Rufus Cosgrave would do when they met at the cor- 
ner of the street, but he could not help understanding 
what was so obvious, and there were moments when sheer 
interest swept him off his feet, and even Rufus was forgot- 
ten. He took an audacious pleasure, too, in leaping sud- 


64f 


THE DARK HOUSE 


denly over the heads of the whole class to the first place. 
He did not always bother. He liked to wait for some 
really teasing question, and then, when silence had be- 
come hopeless, hold up his hand. Mr. Ricardo would look 
towards him, apparently incredulous and satirical, but 
Robert could read the message which the narrowed eyes 
twinkled at him. 

“Of course you understand, Stonehouse.” 

And then he would answer and sweep the sullen class 
with a cool, exasperating indifference as he sat down. For 
he did not want them any more. He returned instinctive 
enmity with the scorn of a growing confidence. It was 
rather fine to stand by yourself, especially when you had 
one friend who thought you splendid whatever you did, 
who clung to you, and whom you had to protect. When 
he walked arm in arm with Rufus Cosgrave in the play- 
ground he trailed his coat insolently, and the challenge 
was not once accepted. From the biggest boys to Dick- 
son Minor, no one cared to risk the limitless possibilities 
of an encounter, and the word “carrots” was not so much 
as whispered in his hearing. 

Then in the late afternoon the real day seemed to be- 
gin. Then the hardness and distrust with which he had 
unconsciously armed himself fell away, and he and Rufus 
Cosgrave sat side by side in the sooty grass behind the 
biscuit factory, and with arms clasped about their scarred 
and grubby knees planned out the vague but glorious time 
that waited for them. Rufus was to be a Civil Servant. 
He did not seem to care much for the prospect or even 
to be very clear as to what would be expected of him. 
He felt, with Robert, that a Civil Servant sounded servile 
and romanceless, but unfortunately the profession, what- 
ever it was, ran in the family. 

“My father’s one, you know. So I’ve got to. I’d rather 
play the piano. But, of course, I wouldn’t say so to any- 
one but you. It sounds too beastly silly ” 

“I’d say whatever I wanted to,” Robert retorted 
grandly “I’ll always say what I want to and do what 


THE DARK HOUSE 


65 


I jolly well like when I’m grown up anyhow. You can 
if you’re strong enough.” 

“But then people hate you,” Rufus said sadly. 

“That doesn’t matter a bit.” 

“Don’t you mind people not liking you.?” 

“Rather not.” 

Rufus fumbled anxiously. 

“Wouldn’t you be pleased if — if you were asked to 
play in the eleven — and the chaps cheered you like they 
do Christopher when he kicks a goal.?” 

“I shouldn’t care — not a button.” But he knew even 
then that it was not true. His heart had leapt at the very 
thought. He drew his fair brows together in the por- 
tentous Stonehouse scowl. “It’s silly to mind what silly 
people think. And kicking goals is no good. I’m going 
to be a doctor — not just the ordinary sort — a big doctor 
— and I’ll discover things — and people like Christopher’ll 
come and beg me to keep them alive.” 

Rufus sighed deeply. 

“I wish I was like that. I mind awfully — ^being ragged, 
and all that. I was awfully miserable until you came. If 
you went away — or didn’t care any more — I don’t know 
what I’d do. But if I went away you wouldn’t mind ” 

“Yes, I would.” 

^‘But you’re so much stronger.” 

“I like being strongest.” 

And then and there he expounded the doctrine of the 
Survival, and Rufus began to shiver all over like a fright- 
ened pony. 

“I think it’s perfectly beastly. What’ll happen to me.? 
Anyone can lick me. I wouldn’t have a chance.” 

The tears came into his round, blue eyes and trickled 
down his freckled cheeks, and a sudden choking tender- 
ness, a dim perception of all that this one friend meant 
to him, made Robert fling his arms about him and hug 
him close. 

“Yes — you would. Because I’ll look after you — always 
— ^honest injun.” 


66 


THE DARK HOUSE 


§2 

There was one secret that he never told to anyone — 
not even to Cosgrave. He was ashamed of it. He knew 
it was silly — sillier than in believing in God — and he had 
almost succeeded in forgetting it when it came true. It 
happened. Just when he was least expecting it it came 
round the corner. First the music, a long way off, but 
growing louder and fiercer so that it seemed as though his 
fancy had suddenly jumped out of his brain and was run- 
ning about by itself, doing just what it liked; then lights, 
torches with streaming flags of fire that put out the street 
lamps altogether, and the shadows of people marching 
— running — leaping — capering. 

Robert ran too. He did not stop to think what it was. 
He was wild with excitement, and as he ran he bounded 
into the air and waved his arms in a pent-up joy of living 
and moving. He never had much chance to run. You 
couldn’t run by yourself for nothing. People stared or 
were annoyed when you bmnped against them. But now 
there was something to run for. There was no one to see 
or hear him in the deserted Grove, and with each bound he 
let out an unearthly, exultant whoop. 

At the corner where Acacia Grove met the High Street 
Rufus Cosgrave squirmed out of the pushing, jostling 
crowd and caught hold of him. He was capless, panting. 
His red hair stood on end. In the flickering torch light he 
looked like a small, delirious Loga. 

“I say — Stonehouse — I was coming for you — it’s a 
circus — they’re going all the way down to the Green — 
they’ve got their tent there — if we could only climb up 
somewhere — I can’t see a thing — not even the elephant’s 
legs.” 

“If we cut round by Griffith’s Road we’ll get there 
first,” Robert shouted. “Only we’ve got to run like mad.” 

He seized Rufus by the hand and they shot free of the 
procession, up and down dim and decorous streets, swerv- 
ing round corners and past astonished policemen whose 


THE DARK HOUSE 


67 


“Now then, you young devils” was lost in the clatter of 
their feet. Cosgrave gasped, but Robert’s hold was re- 
lentless, compelling. He could have run faster by him- 
self, but somehow he could not let Cosgrave go. “You’ve 
got to stick it,” he hissed fiercely. “It’s only a minute.” 

Cosgrave had no choice but to “stick it.” It did not 
even occur to him to resist though his eyes seemed to be 
bulging out of his head and his lungs on the point of 
bursting. But the reward was near at hand. There, at 
the bottom of Griffith’s Road, they could see it — the 
Green, unfamiliar with its garish lights and the ghostly, 
gleaming tents. 

“We’ve done it!” Robert shouted. “Hurrah — ^hurrah 1’^ 

They had, in fact, time to spare. The procession was 
still only half-way down the High Street, a dull red glow, 
like the mouth of a fiery cave, widening with every minute 
as though to swallow them. There was, indeed, a discon- 
certing crowd gathered round the chief entrance, but 
Robert was like a general, cool and vigorous, strung up 
to the finest pitch of cunning. He wormed his way under 
the ropes, he edged and insinuated himself between the idle 
and good-natured onlookers, with Cosgrave, tossed and 
buffeted, but still in tow, struggling in the backwash. At 
last they were through, next to the entrance, and in the 
very front row of all. 

“Now you’ll see the elephant,” Robert laughed tri- 
umphantly, “every bit of him.” 

“Oh, my word!” Cosgrave gasped. “Oh, my word!” 

It was coming. It made itself felt even before it came 
into sight by the sudden tensity of the crowd, the anxious 
pressure from behind, the determined pushing back by 
the righteously indignant in front, the craning of necks, 
and indistinguishable, thrilling murmur. A small boy, 
whom Robert recognized as the butcher’s son, evidently 
torn between the dignity and excitement of his new post, 
stalked ahead and thrust printed notices into the out- 
stretched hands. Robert seized hold of one, but he was 
too excited to read. He felt Rufus poke him insistently. 


68 


THE DARK HOUSE 


“What’s it say — what’s it say?” 

“Shut up — I don’t know — ^look for yourself.” 

There they were. The six torch-bearers were dressed 
like mediaeval pages, or near enough. Their tight-fitting 
cotton hose, sagging a little at the knees, were sky-blue, 
and their tunics green and slashed with yellow. They 
wore jaunty velvet caps and fascinating daggers, ready 
to hand. As they reached the entrance to the tent they 
halted, and with some uneasy shuffling formed up on either 
side, making a splendid passage of fire for the ten Moor- 
ish horsemen who rode next, fierce fellows these, armed 
to the teeth, with black, shining faces and rolling eyes. 
A band struck up inside the tent to welcome them, and 
they rode through, scarcely bending their proud heads — 
much to the relief of the more timorous members of the 
crowd who had eyed the rear end of their noble steeds with 
a natural anxiety. Unfortunately the torches smoked 
a good deal, and there was some grumbling. 

“ ’Ere, take the stinking thing out of me eyes, can’t 
yer?” 

“Right down dangerous, I calls it. If one of them 
there sparks gets into me ’at I’ll be all ablaze in half a 
jiffy. And oo’ll pay for the feathers, I’d like to know?” 

“Oh, shut up — shut up!” Robert whispered bitterly. 
^‘Why can’t everyone shut up?” 

“The Biggest and Best Show in Europe,” Rufus was 
reading aloud in a squeaky treble; “un-pre-ce-dented 
spectacles — performing sea-lions — great chariot-race — 
the Legless Wonder from Iceland — ^Warogha, the Missing 
Link — the greatest living Lady Equestrian, Madame 
Gloria Marotti, Mad-rad — oh, I can’t read that — Gyp 
Labelle, the darling of the Folies Bergeres — what’s Folies 
Bergeres, Robert ? Oh, my word — my word !” 

It was the Shetland ponies that had saved Robert the 
trouble of replying that he didn’t know. After the fero- 
cious magnificence of the Moorish gentlemen, they came as 
a sort of comic relief. Everyone laughed, and even the 
lady with the feather hat recovered her good temper. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


69 


^Why, you could keep one of them in the back yard — 
not an inch bigger than our collie, is he, ’Enry? And 
Jim’s not full grown — not by ’alf.” 

“As though anyone cared about her beastly collie!” 
Robert thought. 

The elephants, a small one and a big one together to 
show their absurd proportions, came next. The earth 
shook under them. They waved their trunks hopefully 
from side to side, and their little brown eyes, which seemed 
to have no relation to their bodies, peered out like pris- 
oners out of the peep-holes of a monstrous moving prison. 
When the man next to Robert offered the smallest of them 
an empty paper-bag it curled its trunk over his head and 
opened its pointed mouth and let out a piercing squeal 
of protest which alarmed its tormentor, and caused his 
neighbours to regard him with nervous disapproval. But 
the big elephant seemed to exercise a soothing influence 
over its companion. It waved its trunk negligently as 
though in contemptuous dismissal of a commonplace 
incident. 

“My dear,” it said, “that’s all you can expect of such 
people.” 

There were men seated on the big elephants’ necks, 
their legs tucked comfortably behind the enormous flap- 
ping ears. They looked mysterious and proud in their 
position. They wore turbans and carried sticks with 
pointed iron spikes at the head, and when they came to 
the low entrance of the tent they prodded their huge 
beasts, which went down on their knees, painfully yet with 
a kind of sorrowful pride, and blundered through amidst 
the admiring murmur of the crowd. 

“The way they manage them big brutes !” declared the 
lady with the feathered hat disconsolately. “And there’s 
our George, a proper ’uman being, and can’t be got to do 
a thing — nohow.” 

The band inside had stopped, beaten in the hard-fought 
contest with its rival at the far end of the procession, 
which thereupon broke out into throaty triumphant trum^ 


70 


THE DARK HOUSE 


pet blasts and exultant roll of drums. Rufus clutched 
wildly at Robert’s sleeve. 

“Oh, my word, just look at her! Oh, my word !” 

Robert craned forward, peering round the embonpoint 
of the man next him. The procession now scarcely moved, 
and there was a space between the last elephant and the 
great coal-black horse that followed — a wide, solemn space, 
that invited you to realize that this was the finest sight 
you had ever seen in your life. He was indeed a splendid, 
terrifying creature. As Rufus Cosgrave said loudly, he 
was not like a human horse at all. One could imagine 
him having just burst out of hell, still breathing fire and 
smoke and rolling his eyes in the anguish of his bridled 
wickedness. In the glare from the tent-door he gleamed 
darkly, a wild thing of black fiames, and those in the front 
row of the crowd trod nervously on the toes of those 
behind, edging out of reach of his restless, dancing hoofs. 
For it seemed impossible that the woman in the saddle 
should be really his master. And yet she sat upright and 
unconcerned. In its black, close-fitting habit, her supple 
body looked a living, vital part of the splendid beast. 
She was his brain, stronger than his savage instinct, and 
every threatening move of his great limbs was dictated 
to him without a sound, almost without a gesture. A 
touch of a slender, patent-leather boot set him prancing, 
an imperceptible twist of the wrist and he stood stock 
still, foam-fiecked and helpless. It was a proud — an awe- 
inspiring spectacle. And it was not only her fearless 
strength. She was fair and beautiful. So Robert saw 
her. He saw nothing else. He gazed and gazed, heart- 
stricken. He did not hear Rufus speak to him, or the 
band which was blaring out a Viennese waltz, an old 
thing, whistled and danced half to death long since, but 
which, having perhaps a spark of immortal youth left 
among the embers, had not lost its power to make the 
pulses quicken. Indeed it even played a humble part in 
this great moment in Robert’s life. Though he did not 
hear it, it poured emotion into the heated, dusty air. It 


THE DARK HOUSE 


71 


painted the tawdry show with richer colours. It was 
the rider’s invisible retinue. At a touch from her heel 
the horse danced to it, in perfect time, arching his great 
neck, and rolling his wild eyes. 

She was proud, too. Robert saw how she disdained the 
gaping multitude. She rode with haughtily lifted head 
and only once her glance, under the white, arrogant lids, 
dropped for an instant. Was it chance, was it the 
agonized intensity of his own gaze which drew it to the 
small boy almost under her horse’s hoofs.? (For he had 
held his ground. He was not afraid. Unlike the rest, 
his trust in her was limitless and unquestioning. And if 
she chose to ride him down, he would not care, no more 
than a fanatic worshipper beneath the wheels of a Jugger- 
naut.) Now under her eyes his heart stood still, his 
knees shook. She did not smile; she did not recognize 
his naked, shameless adoration. And that too was well. 
A smile would have lowered her, brought her down from 
her superb distance. His happiness choked him. She 
was the embodiment of everything that he had heard pass 
in the distance from the silent dusks of Acacia Grove — 
splendour and power, laughter and music, the beat of a 
secret pulse answering the tread of invisible processions. 
She came riding out of the mists of his fancy into light, 
a living reality that he could take hold of, and set up in 
his empty temple. She was not his mother, nor Francey, 
nor God, but she was everything that in their vague and 
different ways these three had been to him before he lost 
them. She was something to be worshipped, to be died 
for, if necessary, with joy and pride. 

But in a moment it was over. She looked away from 
him and rode forward, like a monarch into a grandly 
illuminated castle, amidst the whispered plaudits of her 
people. 

A little girl on a Shetland pony rode at her heels, 
Robert saw her without wanting to see her. She ob- 
truded herself vulgarly. She was dressed as a page, her 
painfully thin legs looking like sticks of peppermint in 


72 


THE DARK HOUSE 


their parti-coloured tights, and either was, or pretended 
to be, terrified of her minute and tubbily good-natured 
mount. At its first move forward she fell upon its neck 
with shrill screams and clung on grotesquely, righting 
herself at last to make mock faces at the grinning crowd. 

“Oh, la, la — ^la-la!” 

She was a plain child with a large nose, slightly Jewish 
in line, a wide mouth, and a mass of crinkly fair hair that 
stood out in a pert halo about her head. Robert hated 
her for the brief moment in which she invaded his con- 
sciousness. It was quite evident that she was trying to 
draw attention from the splendid creature who had pre- 
ceded her to her own puny and outrageous self, and that 
by some means or other she succeeded. She gesticulated, 
she drew herself up in horrible imitation of a proud and 
noble bearing, she pretended that the rotund pony was 
prancing to the music, and, finally, burst into fits of 
laughter. The crowd laughed with her, helplessly as 
though at a huge joke which she shared with each one 
of them in secret. 

“Oh, la la, la la.” 

The man at Robertas side wiped his eyes. 

“Well, did you see that.'^ Upon my word ” 

“A baggage — that’s what I call ’er,” the feathered 
lady retorted severely. ^‘Mark my words — a baggage.” 

Rufus jogged Robert in the side. 

“Wasn’t she a joke.? Didn’t she make you scream.?” 

Robert hated them all. Beastly, despicable people who 
liked beastly, despicable things. 

More horsemen, camels, clowns on foot and clowns on 
donkeys. Finally the band, slightly winded by this time, 
and playing raggedly. The torch-bearers formed up, 
and a large gentleman in riding boots stood for a moment 
in the light. 

“To-morrow evening at eight o’clock — the first per- 
formance of the Greatest Show in Europe — a unique 
opportunity — ^better book your seats early, ladies and 
gentlemen ” 


THE DARK HOUSE 


73 


Then the flaps of the tent fell and all the lights and 
sounds seemed to go out at once. The crowd melted 
away, and only Robert and his companion remained gaz- 
ing spellbound at the closed and silent cave which had 
swallowed all the enchantment. 

Rufus put his hands into his hair and tugged it des- 
perately. 

“Oh, if only I could go — ^if only I could Don’t. 

you want to go, Robert?” 

Robert woke partially from his dream. 

“I’m going.” He turned, and with his hands thrust 
into his pockets began to walk homewards. Rufus 
trotted feverishly at his side. 

“I say, are you really? But then you’ve got no 
people; jolly for you. I wish I hadn’t. My pater’s so 
beastly strict; I’m scared of him. I say, when will you 
go?” 

“To-morrow night, of course.” 

“Have you got the money?” 

“No, but I’ll get it.” 

“Oh, I say, I wish I could. P’r’aps I could too. I’ve 
got money — ^yes, I have, even if it is in a beastly tin 
box. What’s the good of saving till you’re grown up? 
I shan’t want it then like I do now. It’s silly. All grown- 
up people are silly. When I’m grown up I’ll be different. 

I say, Robert, I can come with you, can’t I?” 

“Oh, yes — if you want to.” He was indifferent. It 
puzzled him slightly that Rufus should be so eager. 
What did he know of the true inwardness of what he had 
seen.?^ What had it got to do with him, anyway? 

Rufus brooded, his freckled face puckered with anxious 
contriving. 

“I say, I’ve got an idea! I’ll tell the pater you’ve 
asked me to come over and spend the evening with you 
at your place. It’ll be sort of true, won’t it? And then 
he’ll never think about the money. You won’t mind, will 
you ? It’ll never come out — and if it does. I’ll say I made 
it up.” 


74 


THE DARK HOUSE 


“I don’t care. All right.” 

Rufus drew a great sigh of relief. 

‘‘Isn’t it ripping.'^ Oh, I say, I wish it was to-morrow 
night. I hope I don’t die first. What did you like best, 
Robert? Who are you keenest on?” 

Robert did not answer. It would have been sacrilege 
to talk her over — to drag her down into a silly contro- 
versy. He longed for the moment when Rufus would have 
to leave him. He wanted to be alone and silent. Even 
the thought of Christine and of her inevitable questions 
hurt him like the touch of a rough, unfeeling hand. 

“I liked that kid best — that girl on the funny pony. 
She must have been at the Folies Bergeres, don’t you think? 
Folies Bergeres sounds French, and she was making sort 
of French noises. She made me laugh.” Something wist- 
ful and hungry came into his shrill voice. He pressed 
close to Robert’s side. “I like people who make me laugh. 
I like them better than anything in the world, don’t you? 
It’s jolly to be able to laugh like that — right from one’s 
inside ” 

But Robert only smiled scornfully, hugging his secret 
closer to himself. 


§3 

She came on for the last time in the Final, when the 
whole circus, including the Legless Wonder, paraded 
round the ring to the competitive efforts of both bands. 
Robert’s eyes followed her with anguish. It wasn’t hap- 
piness any more. He might have been a condemned man 
counting the last minutes of his life. He was almost 
glad when it was over and her upright figure had vanished 
under the arch. People began to fidget and reach for 
their hats and coats. A grubby youth with a hot, red 
face and a tray slung round his neck pushed his way be- 
tween the benches shouting: “Signed photographs of the 
c’lebrities, twopence each!” in a raucous indifferent voice. 
Robert waved to him, and he took no notice. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


75 


‘‘Hi — hi!” Robert called faintly. 

The youth stopped. He was terribly bored at first, 
but his boredom became a cynical amusement. There were 
twenty different photographs of Madame Gloria Moretti: 
Madame Moretti full face, side face, three-quarter face, 
on her famous horse Arabesque, with her beautiful foot 
on Arabesque’s prostrate form, in evening dress, stepping 
into her car — a car, at any rate — and so on, with “Gloria - 
Moretti” scrawled nobly across every one of them. 
Robert bought them all. He stuffed them into his coat 
pockets, into his trouser pockets. He dropped them. He 
dropped the pennies and sixpences which he tried to 
count into the tray with shaking fingers. He was drunk 
and reckless with his despairing love. The sales-boy 
winked at everyone in general. 

“Takin’ it ’ard, ain’t ’e, the young dawg.^^” 

People smiled tolerantly. Their smiles said as plainly 
as possible: “We remember being just as silly as that,” 
and Robert hated them. It wasn’t true. They didn’t 
remember. They had forgotten. Or, if they remem- 
bered at all, it was only the things they had done, not what 
they had felt — the frightful pain that was an undreamed- 
of happiness, and the joy that tore the heart out of you, 
and the wonder of a new discovery. You lost yourself. 
You gave everything that you were and had. You asked 
nothing, hoped for nothing. And suddenly you became 
strong so that you were not afraid any more of anything 
in the world — ^not of punishment nor disgrace, nor even 
laughter. 

But they pretended to understand. Their pretence 
made you despise and pity them. It was a horrid thing, 
as though a skeleton came to life and jiggled its bones and 
mouthed at you, “You see, I used to do that too.” That 
was why you told lies to them — even to Christine. 

He had forgotten his cap. The sales-boy ran after 
him with it and stuck it on his thick fair hair back to 
front. 

“There — you’ll be losing your ’ead next !” 


V6 


THE DARK HOUSE 


It was dusk outside. The evening performance began 
at once, and already a thick black stream of people was 
pouring up the roped gangways and frothing and seething 
at the box offices. As they came out of the darkness they 
had a mystical air of suddenly returned life. They were 
pilgrims’ souls surging at the entrance of Paradise. In 
a little while they would see her. Not that they would 
know what they saw. They would not be able to under- 
stand how great, how brave and splendid she was. In their 
blindness of heart they would prefer the ugly little French 
girl with her shrill voice and absurd caperings ; their clap- 
ping would be half-hearted, polite, and there would be no 
passionate, insistent pair of hands to beat up their flag- 
ging enthusiasm and bring her back once more into the 
arena, bowing in regal scorn of them. 

For he, Robert, had brought her back twice, just be- 
cause he wouldn’t stop^ — ^had beaten his hands till even now 
they were hot and swollen. She had not known, and he 
would not have had her know for the whole world. That 
was part of the mystery. You yourself were as nothing. 

But it did hurt intolerably to think that perhaps be- 
cause he was not there she would not be called back so 
often. It was as though he betrayed her — ^broke his al- 
legiance. That afternoon, when it had seemed that the 
evening could never really come, he had told himself that 
this was the last time; but now, standing on the dim out- 
skirts of the crowd, the photographs that he hadn’t been 
able to fit into his pockets held fast in his burning hands, 
he saw how impossible, how even wrong and faithless that 
decision had been. So long as a shilling remained to him 
he had to go, he had to take his place among her loyal 
people. It meant being ‘‘found out” hopelessly and vio- 
lently. They — the mysterious “they” of authority — 
might destroy him utterly. That would be the most splen- 
did thing of all. He would have done all that he could do. 
He would have laid his last tribute at her unconscious 
feet and gone out in fire and thunder. 

He had actually joined the box-office queue when Rufus 


THE DARK HOUSE 


77 


Cosgrave found him. Rufus had been running hard and 
he was out of breath, and his blue eyes had a queer, 
strained look, as though they had wanted to cry and had 
not had the time. And on his dead- white face the freckles* 
stood out, ludicrously vivid. 

“Oh, I say, Robert, where have you been? I waited 
and waited for you. And then I went round to your place 
— and Miss Forsyth said she didn’t know and she seemed 
awfully worried — and — and — oh, I say — you’re not going 
again, are you?” 

Robert nodded calmly. But his heart had begun to 
beat thickly with the premonition of disaster. 

“Yes, I am.” 

“You might have told me — oh, I say, do listen — do 
come out a minute — I’m in an awful hole — there’s going 
to be an awful row — I’m — I’m so beastly scared ” 

He was shivering. He did not seem to know that people 
were looking at him. His voice was squeaky and broken. 
He tugged at Robert’s sleeve. “Oh, I say — do come ” 

Robert looked ahead of him. It meant losing his place. 
Instead of being so close to her that he could smell the 
warm, sweet scent of her as she passed, he would have to 
peer between people’s heads, and she would be a far-off 
vision to him. And yet, oddly enough, it did not occur to" 
him to refuse. He stood out, and they walked together 
towards the dark, huddled army of caravans beyond the 
tents. 

“What is it? What’s the row?” 

“It’s Father — ^he’s got wind of something — Mother told 
me — he’s going to open my money-box when he comes 
home to-night. I didn’t know he’d kept count — ^just the 
sort of beastly thing he would do — and oh, Robert, when 
he finds out I’ve been cramming him he’ll kill me — he will, 
really ” 

At another time Robert might have consoled him with 
the assurance that even the beastliest sort of father might 
hesitate to risk his neck on such slight provocation, but 
he himself was overwrought with three days of peril, of 


78 


THE DARK HOUSE 


desperate subterfuge and feverish alternations between 
joy and anguish. Now, in the mysterious twilight, the 
most terrible, as the most wonderful things seemed not 
merely possible but likely. It made it all the more terrible 
that Rufus should have to endure so much because he had 
taken a fancy to a silly kid who laughed like a hyena till 
you laughed yourself, however much you hated her. 

He held Cosgrave’s sticky hand tight, and at that loyal 
understanding pressure Cosgrave began to ory, shaking 
from head to foot, jerking out his words between his chat- 
tering teeth. 

“It’s s-stupid to cry — I do w-wish I w-wasn’t always 
c-crying about everything — after all — ^he c-cant kill me 
more than once, can he.?^ But he’s such a beast. He 
h-hates anyone else to h-have a good time and tell lies. 
He’s always so j- jolly glad to let into me or mother — 
and when he finds out we’ve been stuffing him he — ^he 
goes mad — and preaches for days and days. Mother^s a 
brick. She gave me a shilling to put back — but he — he 
keeps her short, and she has to tell about every penny. 
She says she’ll have to pretend she lost it. And it’s not 
enough, anyway. Oh — Robert, you don’t know what a 
row there’ll be.” 

But Robert knew. He felt the cruel familiar ruffling 
of the nerves. He heard the thud of his father’s step, the 
horrible boom of his father’s voice, “You’re a bom liar, 
Christine — ^you’re making my son into a liar.” It was as 
though Dr. Stonehouse had pushed off the earth that 
covered him and stood up. 

It was awful that Rufus should be frightened too. It 
wasn’t fair. He wasn’t strong enough. 

) “I say — ^we’ll have to do something. How much did 
you take out.'^” 

“ ’Bout three shillings — there was an extra penny or 
two — p’r’aps he wouldn’t notice that, though — I thought 
p’r’aps — oh, I don’t know what I thought — ^but I had 
to come to tell you — I hadn’t anyone else ” 

Robert nodded. He stopped and looked back towards 


THE DARK HOUSE 


79 


the big central tent. It had grown at once larger and 
vaguer. The lighted entrance had a sort of halo round it 
like the moon before it is going to rain. There was an 
empty, sinking feeling in his stomach, and he too had be- 
gun to tremble, in little, imcontrollable gusts. He let go 
his hold on Rufus’s hand so that he should not know. 

“I’ve got two bob — somewhere,” he heard himself say- 
ing casually and rather grandly. 

He knew now that he would never see her again. There 
was no struggle in his mind, because there did not seem to 
be any choice. It wasn’t that little Cosgrave counted 
more — ^he hardly counted at all in that moment. But she, 
if she knew he existed, would expect him to do the right, 
the fine thing. Francey would have expected it. And she 
was only a mere girl. How much more this noble, wonder- 
ful woman It was better than clapping. Somewhere at 
the back of his mind was the idea that he offered her a 
more gallant tribute, and that one day she would know 
that he had stuck up for Cosgrave for her sake, and, re- 
mote and godlike though she was, be just a little pleased. 
The comfort of it was a faint warm light showing through 
his darkness. It was all he had. As he dug those last, 
most precious shillings out of the chaos of his pockets he 
felt himself go sick and faint, just as he had done when, 
in a desperate fight, a boy bigger than himself had kicked 
his shin. 

“There — ^you can put them back, can’t you.?* He’ll 
never know ” 

Rufus stopped crying instantly, after the miraculous 
fashion of his years. He cut an elfish caper. He rubbed 
himself against his saviour like some small grateful animal. 

“I say, you are a brick. I knew you’d help somehow. 
Won’t he be sold, though.? I’ll just love to see his beastly 
face ! What luck — not having a father, like you. I say, 
though, is that all you’ve got.? You won’t be able to go 
to the show now — and you’re bO keen, aren’t you.?” 

“It doesn’t matter,” Robert answered carelessly. “I 
don’t mind much — not really.” 


80 


THE DARK HOUSE 


He began to walk on, Rufus tagging valiantly at his 
heels. 

“And — and if anyone asks — ^you’ll say I was at your 
place — doinff prep. — ^won’t you.'^” 

“Oh, rather ’’ 

“It’s awfully decent of you. You don’t mind telling fibs, 
do you, Robert.?”’ 

“One has to,” Robert answered austerely. “Everyone 
has to.” 

Now that it was all over and he turned his back on her 
for ever, the splendid glow of renunciation began to fade. 
Life stretched before him, a black limitless emptiness. He 
wished agonizedly that Arabesque had gone mad and 
bolted and that he had stopped him and saved his rider’s 
life, dying gloriously and at once, instead of miserably and 
by inches, like this. He felt that in a moment the pain 
in his throat would get the better of him and he would 
begin to cry. 

They stopped at the far end of the Green where it was 
dark and they could hardly see each other. He heard 
Cosgrave breathing heavily through his nose, almost snort- 
ing, and then a timid, shamefaced whisper: 

“You are decent to me. I say — I do love you so, 
Robert.” 

It was an awful thing to have said. They both knew 
it. If anyone had overheard them the shame would have 
haunted them to their death. And yet it was wonderful 
too. Never to be forgotten. 

“You oughtn’t to say rotten, stupid things like that — 
like silly girls.” And then, as though it had been torn 
from him. “I love you too, Rufus.” 

After that he ran madly so that Rufus could not over- 
take him — above all so that he could not hear the band 
which had begun to play the opening march. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


81 


§4 

But before he had stopped running he had begun to 
plot again. Even though he had made the great renun- 
ciation he could not help hoping. It was the kind of hope 
that, when one is very young, follows on the heels of ab- 
solute despair, and is based on magical impossibilities. 
It was like his birthday hopes, which had been known to 
rise triumphant above the most obvious and discouraging 
facts. After all there was to-morrow. He would tell 
Christine everything — open his heart to her as to a good 
and understanding friend — and she would give him six- 
pence so that he could stand in the cheap places, or per- 
haps a shilling so that he could go twice. He would tell 
her how he had saved Cosgrave from a fearful row, and 
she would approve of him and sympathize with Cosgrave, 
who had such beastly, understanding people. 

He would hug her and say : 

“It’s jolly to have someone like you, Christine!” 

And she would be enormously pleased, and in the dusk 
they would sit close together and he would tell her of his 
superb being who changed the course of his life, who was 
like his mother and Francey and God rolled into one, and 
for whose sake he had emptied the housekeeping purse. 

Perhaps it would all have happened just as he planned 
it, could it have happened then and there. But the front 
door was closed and he had to wait a long time for the 
landlady’s heavy answering tread. When she came at last 
it was from upstairs — ^he could tell by her breathing and 
a familiar creak — and a cold dead hand laid itself on his 
heart and squeezed the hope out of it. They had been 
talking about him — those two grown-up people. He knew 
the kind of things they had said: “It’s very tiresome of 
him to be out so late, Mrs. Withers,” and, “Boys is wor- 
ritting, outrageous critters, M’am,” and the cruel impos- 
sibility of reaching their far-off impervious understanding 
lamed him before the door had opened. 


82 


THE DARK HOUSE 


Mrs. Withers’ lumpy figure loomed up grotesquely 
against the yellow murk. 

‘Ts that you, Master Robert? You’d better run up 
quick. Your aunt is going to give you a jacketing, I can 
tell you.” 

“Aunt” was the term with which Mrs. Withers covered 
up what she considered privately to be an ambiguous re- 
lationship. 

Robert slunk past her. He crawled upstairs with an 
aggressive deliberation. He would show how much he 
cared. He was not afraid of Christine. He had seen her 
unhappy too often. In a way he knew that he was 
stronger than she was. For she was old and had no one 
to love but himself. 

All the same he was afraid. With every step he took he 
seemed to climb farther and farther into the midst of fear. 
It was all around him — in the close, airless dark and in 
the deathly quiet light that came from the open doorway 
overhead. What was waiting for him there? His father, 
risen unimaginably loathsome from the grave? For he 
could never be in the dark without thinking of his father. 
Or something else? At least he knew that the never-really- 
believed-in time of peace was over and that the monster 
which had lain hidden and quiescent so long was crouched 
somewhere close to him, ready to leap out. 

Christine sat by the table under the light. There was a 
drawer beside her which she had evidently tom out of its 
place in panic-stricken haste, for the floor about her was 
littered with its contents — gloves and handkerchiefs and 
ribbons. She held a shabby, empty purse in her limp 
hand, and it was as though she had sat down because she 
had no longer the strength to stand. He had not known 
before how grey her hair was. Her face was grey, too, 
and withered like a dead leaf. 

He stood hesitating in the doorway and they looked at 
one another. There was no question of punishment or re- 
proof between them. It was the old days over again when 
they had clung together in the face of a common peril— 


THE DARK HOUSE 


83 


helpless and horribly afraid. She tried to smile and push 
the empty purse out of sight as though it were of no ac- 
count at all. Amd all at once he was ashamed and miser- 
able with pity. 

“I was beginning to get quite worried about you.” He 
could hardly hear her. ‘‘Where have you been, Robert.?” 

He answered heavily, not moving from the doorway 
where he hung like a sullen shadow. 

“At the Circus.” 

“Is there a Circus.? Why didn’t Mrs. Withers tell me.? 
If I had known that I shouldn’t have worried. I expect 
you were there yesterday too — and the day before, weren’t 
you, dear.?” 

He nodded, and she began to bundle everything back 
into the drawer, as though at last a tiresome question had 
been satisfactorily settled. 

“I knew it was all right. Mr. Ricardo was here this 
afternoon. He thought I was ill — ^he thought you had 
told him you couldn’t come because I was ill. I said I had 
had to stay at home — ^it was easier — I knew there had been 
a mistake.” 

The old life again. They were confederates and she 
had lied to shield him even from herself. She was looking 
past him as though she saw someone standing behind him 
in the dark passage. He was so sure of it that he wanted 
to turn round. But he did not dare. 

“I wish I’d known. We — ^we might have gone together. 
I used to be very fond of a good circus. Did they have 
elephants.? Robert — Robert, dear, why didn’t you teU me 
about it.?” 

He shook his head. He knew now that he could never 
have told her or made her understand. She would have 
thought him siUy — or disloyal. She would never see that 
this new love had nothing to do with the Robert who would 
die if Christine left him. It had to do with another boy 
who longed for bands and processions and worshipped 
happy, splendid people who did not have to tell lies and 
who were so strong and fearless that even fierce animals 


84 


THE DARK HOUSE 


had to obey them. They were different. They did not 
live in the same life. You could love them without pain or 
pity. 

It was a secret thing, inside himself. If he tried to drag 
it out and show it her, no one could teU what would hap- 
pen to it. 

She sighed deeply. 

^Tt^s this being away all day. If I had been at home 
you would have asked me for the money, wouldn’t you? 
And then you forgot to tell me. But I’ve been a little 
worried. You didn’t take it all, did you, dear?” 

‘‘Yes, I did. I spent it at the Circus. And then I gave 
some to Cosgrave.” 

He saw the blood rush up wildly into her white face. 
The next minute she had laughed — a gay, unfamiliar laugh 
— and he winced and shivered as though she had struck 
him. 

“Why, that’s so like your father — that’s just what 
your father would have done. He loved doing kind, gener- 
ous things — ^giving money away.” 

And now he knew for certain who it was who stood be- 
hind him in the dark passage. He could not bear it. He 
slammed the door to, closing his eyes tight so that he 
should not see. He ran to her, pressing himself against 
her, stammering passionately, 

“I’m not like my father — ^I’m not — I’m not. I won’t 
be.” 

She petted him tenderly. She was grave now and sure 
of herself. 

“You mustn’t say that, Robert. Your father was a 
wonderful man, in many ways. People didn’t understand 
him — only your mother and I. If your mother had lived 
it would all have been quite different. He was unfortunate 
and often very unhappy. The world thinks so much of 
money. But he despised it. It was nothing to him. 
You’re like that too. You didn’t realize, did you? It 
didn’t seem a great deal. It was just a beginning. But I 
have had to do without food. I’ve been hungry some- 


THE DARK HOUSE 


85 


times— ~I think I ought to tell you this, so that you may 
understand — I’ve looked into shop-windows at lunch-time. 
You see, it was to pay for the time when you are prepar- 
ing to be a doctor. It means hundreds of pounds, Robert. 
But I calculated that if I saved a little every week — ^I’d 
manage it — if I didn’t die or lose my work.” 

“Don’t, Christine — ^please don’t! Oh, Christine!” 

“If I lost my work — Mr. Percy is very kind. He is an 
old friend and knows the position. But he has his business 
to consider. I’m not quick — my eyes aren’t strong. There 
are younger, cleverer people. We’ve got to look things 
in the face, Robert. If I lost my work there would be 
nothing between us and the workhouse — nothing — nothing 
— nothing.” 

He was shivering as if with bitter cold. His teeth chat- 
tered in his head. He caught a ghost-like glimpse of a 
boy in the glass opposite — a strange, unfamiliar figure 
with a white, tear-stained face and haggard eyes and fair 
hair all on end. 

“Oh, Christine — I’m frightened!” 

“You think money must come from somewhere. ‘Some- 
thing will turn up.’ That was what your father used to 
say. He was so hopeful. It wasn’t possible that it 
shouldn’t turn up. But I was younger and stronger then 
— I can’t begin again — ^I can’t — I can’t. If you’re not 
good, Robert, I can’t go on.” 

“I will be good. I won’t tell lies. I won’t spend money 
ever again. I won’t love anyone but you. I won’t be a 
doctor; I’ll be something cheap — now.” 

He had forgotten the photographs. He still held them 
in one tight-clenched hand. But she had seen them. And 
all at once she braced herself as. though to meet an implac- 
able enemy. She was not tender any more. She was the 
Christine who had faced bailiffs and his father’s strange, 
gay friends — ice-cold and bitter and relentless. She took 
the pictures from him. With a terrible ironic calm she 
sorted them from his pockets, and spread them out on the 
table like a pack of cards. He dared not look at her. He 


86 


THE DARK HOUSE 


was afraid to see what she was seeing. She had tom open 
the door of his secret chamber, and there in that blasting 
light was his treasure, naked, defenceless. He could have 
cried out in his dread, “Only don’t say anything — don’t 
say anything!” 

“So that’s what you liked so much, Robert — that’s 
what you spent the money on. It’s the old story — ^begin- 
ning again — only worse.” She added, almost to herself: 
“A vulgar, common woman.” 

She put her face between her hands. He could hear 
her quiet crying. It was awful. His love for her was 
a torture. Because she was not wonderful at all but 
human and pitiful like himself, he felt her grief like a knife 
turning and turning in his own heart. But he could not 
comfort her. He could only stare aghast at that row of 
faces — grinning, smirking, arrogant, insolent faces. 

It was true. The jolly lights had been turned out. 
The band had stopped playing. 

A vulgar, common woman 1 

* * * * 

He stood with his back to the Circus entrance where 
he could smell the sawdust and hear the hum of the audi- 
ence crowding into their seats. The invisible band gave 
funny noises like a man clearing his throat. There was 
still a number of people coming in — some strolling idly, 
others pulled along by their excited charges. It was queer, 
Robert thought, that they should be excited. The smell 
of the sawdust made him feel rather sick. 

He gave out his last handbill. Nobody noticed him. 
They took the slip of paper which he thrust into their 
hands without looking at him. He went and stood at the 
box-office where the big man in riding boots was count- 
ing out his money. It was a high box-office, so that Robert 
had to stand on tip-toe to be seen. 

“I’ve finished,” he said. 

The man glanced at him and then remembered. 

“Oh, yes, you’re the young feller. Given ’em aU out, 


THE DARK HOUSE 


87 


eh? Not thrown ’em on the rubbish heap? Well, what 
is it?” 

“I want my sixpence.” 

‘‘Oh, sixpence I promised you, did I? Well, here’s a 
shilling seat. That’ll do better, eh, what? You can go in 
now.” 

“I want my sixpence.” 

“You don’t want — don’t want to go to the Circus?” 

“I don’t like Circuses.” 

The big man stared down at the white set face gazing 
stolidly back at him over the wooded ledge. He tossed 
the coin indignantly across. 

“Well, of all the unnatural, ungrateful young jacka- 
napes ” 

But he was so astonished that he had to lean out of his 
box and watch the blasphemer — a quaint figure, bowed 
as though under a heavy burden, its hands thrust hard 
into its trousers pockets — stalk away from the great tent 
and without so much as a backward glance lose itself 
among the crowd. 


PART II 


I 

§1 

'^HEY came to an idle halt near Cleopatra^s needle, 
“■* and leaning against the Embankment wall, looked 
across the river to the warehouses opposite, which, in the 
evening mist, had the look of stark cliffs guarded by a soli- 
tary watchful lion. The smaller of the two young men 
took off his soft hat and set it beside him so that he could 
let the wind brush through his thick red hair. He held 
himself very straight, his slender body taut with solemn 
exultation. 

“If only one could do something with it,” he said ; “eat 
it — ^hug it — get inside of it somehow — ^belong to it. It 
hurts — this gaping like an outsider. Look now — one 
shade of purple upon another. Isn’t it unendurably 
beautiful? But if one could write a sonnet — or a sonata 

— or paint a picture That’s where the real artist 

has the pull over us poor devils who can only feel things. 
He wouldn’t just stand here. He’d get out his fountain 
pen or his paint-box and make it all his for ever and ever. 
Think of Whistler now — ^what he would do with it.’^ 

“I can’t,” Stonehouse said. “Who’s Whistler?” 

Cosgrave laughed in anticipation of his little joke. 

“Nobody, old fellow. At least, he never discovered 
any bugs.” 

The wind snatched up his forgotten hat and it sailed 
off up river into the darkness like a large unwieldy bird. 
He looked after it ruefully. 

“That was a new hat. I’ll have to go home without one. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


89 


and the Pater will think I’ve been in a drunken brawl, and 
there’ll be a beastly row.” 

“That’s the one thing he’ll never believe. Well, I don’t 
care. It’ll be over soon. If I’ve passed that exam. I’ll get 
away and he won’t be able to nag me any more. And you 
do think I’ve passed, don’t you, Stonehouse.^^” 

“If you didn’t imagine your answers afterwards.” 

“Honour bright, I didn’t. I believe I did a lot better, 
really. You know, I’m so awfully happy to-night I’d be- 
lieve anything. It’s queer how this old river fits in with 
one’s moods, isn’t it.? Last time we were here I wanted to 
drown myself, and there it was ready to hand, as it were 
— offering eternal oblivion — and all that. I thought of all 
the other fellows who had drowned themselves, and felt 
no end cheered up. And now it makes me think of escape 
— of getting away from everything — sailing to strange, 
new countries ” 

“The last time you were here,” Stonehouse said, “you’d 
just come out of the exam. If you really answered as you 
say you did, there was no reason for your wanting to 
drown yourself.” 

“But I did. You’re such a distrustful beggar. You 
think I just imagine things. No, I’ll tell you what it was 
— I didn’t care. There I was — I’d swotted and swotted. 
I’d thought that if only I could squeeze through I’d be the 
happiest man on earth. And then, when it was all over I 
began to think: ‘What’s it all for, what’s it all about.? 
What’s the good.?’ Suppose I have passed. I’ll get some 
beastly little job in some stuffy Government office, £200 
a year, if I’m lucky. And then if I’m good and not too 
bright they’ll raise me to £250 in a couple of years’ time, 
and so it’ll go on — nothing but fug, and dinge, and skimp- 
ing, and planning — with a fortnight at the seaside once a 
year or a run over to Paris. I suppose it was good enough 
for our grandfathers, Stonehouse — this just keeping alive.? 
But it didn’t seem good enough to me. Don’t you feel 
like that sometimes — when you think of the time when 
you’ll be able to stick M.D., or whatever it is, after your 


90 THE DARK HOUSE 

name — as though, after all, it didn’t matter a brace of 
shakes?” 

Robert Stonehouse roused himself from his lounging 
attitude and thrust his hands deep into his trousers pock- 
ets. There was a nip in the wind, and he had no overcoat. 

“No. When I’ve got through this next year I shall 
feel that I’ve climbed out of a black pit and that the 
world’s before me — to do what I like with.” 

“Well — ^you’re different.” Cosgrave sighed, but not un- 
happily. “You’re going to do what you want to do, and 
I expect you’ll be great guns at it. I dare say if I were 
to play the piano all day long — decently, you know, as 
I do sometimes, inside me at any rate — and get money for 

it, I’d think it worth while But it takes a lot to 

make one feel that way about a Government office.” 

His voice was quenched by a sudden rush of traffic — 
a tram that jangled and swayed, a purring limousine full 
of vague, glittering figures, and a great belated lorry 
lumbering in pursuit like an uncouth participant in some 
fantastic race. They roared past and vanished, and into 
the empty space of quiet there flowed back the under- 
tones of the river, solitary footfalls, the voice of the 
drowsing city. The loneliness became something magical. 
It changed the colour of Cosgrave’s thoughts. He pressed 
closer to his companion, and, with his elbows on the bal- 
ustrade and his hands clenched in his hair, spoke in an 
awed whisper. 

“It does seem worth while now. That’s what’s so ex- 
traordinary. I feel I can stick anything — even being a 
Government clerk all my life. I don’t even seem to mind 
home like I did. I’m in love. That’s what it is. You’ve 
never been in love, have you, Stonehouse?” 

“No.” 

“You’re such a cast-iron fellow. I don’t know how 
I have the nerve to tell you things. Sometimes I think 
you don’t care a snap for anything in the world, except 
just getting on.” 

Robert Stonehouse hunched his shoulders against the 


THE DARK HOUSE 


91 


wind. There was more than physical discomfort in the 
movement — a kind of secret distress and resentment. 

“You do talk a lot of sentimental rubbish,” he said. 
“It seems to me it’s only a hindrance — this caring so 
much for people. It gets in a man’s way. Not that it 
matters to you just now. You’ve got a slack time. You 
can alford to fool around.” 

“You think I’m a milksop,” Cosgrave said patiently, “I 
don’t mind. I dare say it’s true. There’s not much fight 
in me. I don’t seem able to do without people like you 
can. I think, sometimes, if I hadn’t had you to back me 
up I’d never have been able to stick things. Of course, 
I’m not clever, either. But you’re wrong about being in 
love. It doesn’t get in one’s way. It helps. Everything 
seems different.” 

Stonehouse was silent, his fair, straight brows con- 
tracted. When he spoke at last it was dispassionately 
and impersonally, as one giving a considered judgment. 
But his voice was rather absurdly young. 

“You may be right. I hadn’t thought about it before. 
It didn’t seem important enough. There was a woman I 
knew when I was a kid — a common creature — who was 
fond of saying that ‘it was love that made the world go 
round.’ (My father married her for her money, which 
didn’t go round at all.) Still, in her way, she was stating 
a kind of biological fact. If people without much hold 
on life didn’t fall in love they’d become extinct. They 
wouldn’t have the guts to push on or the cheek to per- 
petuate themselves. But they do fall in love, and I sup- 
pose, as you say, things seem different. They seem dif- 
ferent — ^worth while. So they marry and have children, 
which seems worth while too — different from other people’s 
children, at any rate, or they wouldn’t be able to bear the 
sight of them. What you call love is just a sort of trick 
played on you. If crowds are of any use I suppose it’s 
justified. It’s a big ‘if,’ though.” 

Cosgrave smiled into the dark. 

“It sounds perfectly beastly. Not a bit encouraging. 


92 


THE DARK HOUSE 


But I don’t care, somehow. Do you mind if I tell you 
about her.?* I’ve got to talk to somebody.” 

“I don’t mind. But I don’t want to stand here any 
longer. It’s cold, and, besides, I’ve got to be up west by 
six.” 

They turned and strolled on toward Westminster. 
Robert Stonehouse still kept his hands thrust into his 
pockets, and the position gave his heavy-shouldered 
figure a hunched fighting look, as though he had set him- 
self to stride out against a tearing storm. He took no 
notice of Cosgrave, who talked on rapidly, stammering 
a little and scrambling for his words. The wind blew his 
hair on end, and he walked with his small wistful nose 
lifted to the invisible stars. 

“You see, I can’t teU anyone at home about her. It’s 
not as though she were even what people call a lady. (Oh, 
I’m perfectly sane — I don’t humbug myself.) Mother’d 
have a fit, and the Pater only looks at that kind of thing 
in one way — ^his own particularly disgusting way. She 
drops her aitches sometimes. But she’s good, and she’s 
pretty as a flower. I met her at a dance club. I’d never 
been to such a place before. And then one evening it sud- 
denly came over me that I wanted to be among a lot of 
people who were having a good time. So I plunged. You 
pay sixpence, you know, and everybody dances with every- 
body. Of course I can’t dance. She saw me hang- 
ing round and looking glum, I suppose, and she was nice 
to me. She taught me a few steps, and I told her about 
the exam, and how worried I was about it, and we became 
friends. I’ve never had a girl-friend before. It’s amaz- 
ing. And she’s different, anyway She’s on the stage 

— in the chorus to begin with — ^but you’d think they’d 
given her a lead, she’s so happy about it. That’s what I 
love about her. Everything seems jolly to her. She en- 
jo3^s things like a kid — a ’bus ride, a cinema, our little sup- 
pers together. She loves just being alive, you know. It’s 
extraordinary — I say, are you listening, Stonehouse 

“I didn’t know you wanted me to listen. I thought you 


THE DARK HOUSE 


oa 

wanted to talk, I was thinking of an operation I saw 
once — you wouldn’t understand — it was a ticklish job^ 
and the man lost his head. He tried to hide it, but I knew, 
and he saw I knew. A man like that oughtn’t to operate.” 

“And did the other fellow die.?^” 

“Oh, yes. But he would have died anyway, probably. 
It wasn’t that that mattered. It was losing his nerve like 
that.” 

“If I saw an operation,” Cosgrave said humbly, “I 
should be sick.” 

Stonehouse had not heard. They reached the bridge 
in silence, and under a street lamp stopped to take leave 
of one another. It was their customary walk and the 
customary ending, and each wondered in his different way 
how it was that they should always want to meet and to 
talk to one another of things that only one of them could 
understand. 

“Why does he bother with me.'*” Cosgrave thought. 

But he was sorry for Robert, partly because he guessed 
that he was hungry and partly because he knew that he 
was not in love. 

“I wish you’d come along too,” he said a little breath- 
lessly; “I want you to meet her, you know — for us all to 
be friends together — ^just a quiet supper — and my treat, 
of course.” 

It was very transparent. He tried to look up at his 
companion boldly and innocently. But the light from 
the street lamp fell into his strange blue eyes, with their 
look of young and anxious hopefulness, and made them 
blink. Robert Stonehouse laughed. He knew what was 
in Cosgrave’s mind, and it seemed to him half comic and 
half pathetic and rather irritating. 

“I don’t suppose you have enough to pay for supper, 
anyway,” he said roughly, “or you’ll go without your 
lunch to-morrow. Don’t be an idiot. Look after your- 
self and I’ll look after myself. Besides, if you think I’m 
not going to have a square meal to-night you’re enor- 
mously mistaken. I’m going to dine well — ^where you’ll 


94 


THE DARK HOUSE 


never set your foot, not until you’re earning more than 
£250 a year, at any rate.” 

“Word of honour?” 

“Oh, word of honour, of course.” 

A shy relief came into the pinched and freckled face. 

“Oh, well then — ^but I do want you to meet all the 
same; you see, she’d like it — she knows all about you. 
I’m always bragging about you. Perhaps I could bring 
her round — if Miss Forsyth wouldn’t mind — if she’s well 
enough.” 

Robert Stonehouse half turned away, as though shrink- 
ing from an unwelcome, painful touch. 

“She’s all right.” 

“Then may we come? I’m not afraid of Miss Forsyth. 
She’s an understanding person. She won’t think people 
common because of their aitches. Give her my love, 
won’t you, Robert. And good night.” 

“Oh, good night!” He added quickly, sullenly: “You 
look blue with cold. Why don’t you wear a decent 
coat ? It’s idiotic I” 

“Because my coat isn’t decent. I don’t want her to 
see me shabby. And I like to pretend I’m rather a 
strong, dashing fellow who doesn’t mind things. Besides, 
look at yourself I” 

“I’m different.’^ 

“You needn’t rub it in.” He was gay now with an 
expectation that bubbled up in him like a fountain. He 
made as though to salute Robert solemnly and then 
remembered and clutched at his wind-blown hair instead. 
“Oh, my hat I Well, it will make Connie laugh like any- 
thing!” he said. 


§2 

To be a habitue of Brown’s was to prove yourself 
a person of some means and solid discrimination. At 
Brown’s you could get cuts from the joint, a porter-house 
steak, apple tart, and a good boiled pudding as nowhere 


THE DARK HOUSE 


95 


else m the world. You went in through the swinging 
doors an ordinary and fallible human being, and you 
came out feeling you had been fed on the very stuff 
which made the Empire. You were slightly stupefied, 
but you were also superbly, magnificently unbeatable. 

Mr. Brown was an Englishman. But he did not glory 
in the fact. It was, as he had explained to Robert one 
night, his kindly, serious face glowing in the reflection 
from the grill, a tragedy. 

“To be born an Englishman and a cook — it’s like 
being bom a bird without wings. You can’t soar — 
not however hard you try — not above roasts and boils. 
Take vegetables. An Englishman natur’lly boils. And 
it’s no good going against nature. You’re a doctor — 
or going to be — and you know that. You’ve got to do 
the best you can, but you can’t do more. That’s my 

motto. But if I’d been bom a Frenchman Well 

it’s no use dreaming. If them potatoes are ready, Jim, 
so’m I.” 

Mr. Brown had taken a fancy to Robert Stonehouse 
from the moment that the latter had challenged him 
on the very threshold of his kitchen and explained, coolly 
and simply, his needs and his intentions. Mr. Brown was 
frankly a Romantic, and Robert made up to him for the 
souffles and other culinary adventures which Fate had 
denied him. He liked to dream himself into Robert’s 
future. 

“One of these days I’ll be pointing you out to my 
special customers — ‘Yes, sir, that’s Sir Robert him- 
self. Comes here every Saturday night for old times’ 
sake. Used to work here with me — waited with his 
own hands, sir — for two square meals and ten per cent, 
of his tips. You don’t get young men like that these 
days — no, sir.” 

Robert accepted his prophetic vision gravely. It was 
what he meant to happen, and it did not seem to him to be 
amusing. 

Brown’s was tucked away in a quiet West End side 


96 


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street, and there was only one entrance. At six o’clock 
the tables were still empty, and Robert walked through 
into the employees’ dressing-room. He put on his 
white jacket, slightly stained with iodoform, and a black 
apron which concealed his unprofessional grey trousers, 
and went to work in the pantry, laying out plates and 
dishes in proper order, after the manner of a general 
marshalling his troops for action. He was deft handed, 
and responsible for fewer breakages than any of the 
old-timers — foreigners for the most — ^who flitted up and 
down the passages with the look of bats startled from 
their belfries and only half awake. Through an open 
glass window he could see into the huge kitchen, where 
Mr. Brown brooded over his oven, and catch rich, sen- 
suous odours that went to his head like so many ethereal- 
ized cocktails. He had not eaten since the morning, 
and though he was too strong to faint, it grew increas- 
ingly difficult to fix his mind on the examination question 
which he had set himself. He found himself wondering 
instead, what would happen if old Brown lost his flair 
for the psychological moment in roasts, and why it was 
that a man who had performed an operation successfully 
a hundred times should suddenly go to pieces over it.^ 
What made him lose faith in himself Nerves A matter 
of the liver.? We were only at the beginning of our in- 
vestigations. And then poor little Cosgrave, who as 
suddenly began to believe in himself and in life generally 
because he had fallen in love with a chorus girl! 

The head waiter looked round the pantry door. He 
was a passionate Socialist who, in his spare time, preache'd 
the extermination of all such as did not work for their 
daily bread. But he disliked Robert bitterly, as a species 
of bourgeois blackleg. 

“You’re wanted. There’s a party of ten just come 
in. Hurry up, can’t yer.?” 

Robert put down his plates and went into the dining- 
room with the wine list. His table-napkin he carried neat- 
ly folded over one arm. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


97 


And there was Francey Wilmot. 

She had other people with her, but he saw her first. 
He could not have mistaken her. Of course, she had 
changed. She was taller, for one thing, and wore eve- 
ning dress instead of the plain brown frock that he re- 
membered. But her thick hair had always been short, and 
now it was done up it did not seem much shorter. And 
it still had that quaint air of being brushed up^ from her 
head by a secret, rushing wind — of wanting to fly away 
with her. She was burnt, too, an alien sun and 

wind. Her face and neck were a golden brown, and 
in reckless contrast with her white shoulders. One saw 
how little she cared. She sat with her elbows on the 
table, and the sight of the supple hands and strong, 
slender wrists stopped Robert Stonehouse short, as 
though a deep, old wound which had not troubled him 
for years had suddenly begun to hurt again. And yet 
how happy he had been, as a little boy, when she had 
just touched him. 

It was evidently a celebration in her honour. A tall 
young man with side whiskers who came in late pre- 
sented her with a bunch of roses in the name of the whole 
company and with a gay, exaggerated homage. They 
were a jolly crowd. They had in common their youth 
and an appearance of good-natured disregard for the 
things that ordinary people cared about. Otherwise they 
were of all sorts and conditions, like their clothes. Two 
or three were in evening dress, and one girl who sat at 
the end of the table and smoked incessantly wore a 
shabby coat and skirt and a raffish billycock hat. Chelsea 
or the University Schools was stamped on all of them. 
There wasn’t much that they didn’t know, and there was 
very little that they believed in — not even themselves. 
For they were of the very newest type, and would have 
scorned to admit to a Purpose or a Faith. But they 
could not help being young and rather liking one an- 
other, and the good food and the promise of a riotous 
evening. 


98 


THE DARK HOUSE 


Robert knew their kind. He even knew by sight the 
side-whiskered young man who now clapped his hands 
like an Eastern potentate. He had been of Robert’s 
year at the University, and had been ploughed twice. 

“Wine-ho! Fellow creatures, what is it to be? In 
honour of the occasion and to show our contempt of cir- 
cumstances, shall we say a magnum of Heidsieck? All 
in favour wave their paws ” 

The girl in the billycock hat blew a great puff of smoke 
towards him. 

“Oh, death and damnation, Howard! Haven’t I been 
explaining to you all the afternoon that I owe rent for a 
fortnight to a devil in female form, and that unless some- 
one buys ‘A Sunset over the Surrey Cliffs seen Upside 
Down,’ Gerty will be on the streets? Make it beer with 
a dash o’ bitters.” 

Finally it was Francey who decided. She beckoned, not 
looking at him, and Robert with a little obsequious 
bow, handed her the wine card and waited at her elbow. 
He was not afraid of Howard’s recognition. They had 
never spoken to one another, and in any case Howard 
would not believe his eyes. 

It was strange to stand near to her again and to rec- 
ognize the little things about her that had fascinated 
small Robert Stonehouse — the line of her neck, the brown 
mole at the corner of her eye which people were always 
trying to rub off, the way her hair curled up from her 
temples in two unmistakable horns. He had teased her 
about them in his shy, clumsy way. A very subtle and 
sweet warmth emanated from her like a breath. It took 
him back to the day when he had huddled close to her, 
hiccoughing with grief and anger, and yet deeply, deliri- 
ously happy because she was sorry for him. It made 
him giddy with a sense of unreality, as fjiough the pres- 
ent and the intervening years were only part of one 
of his night stories, which, after their tiresome, undevia- 
ting custom, had got tangled up in a monstrous, impos- 
sible dream. And then a new fancy took possession of 


THE DARK HOUSE 


99 


him. He wanted to bend closer to her and say, very quiet- 
ly, as though he were suggesting an order, “What about 
your handkerchief.? Do you want it back, Francey?” 

Amidst his austerely disciplined thoughts the impulse 
was like a mad, freakish intruder, and it frightened him, 
so that he drew back sharply. 

“Cider-cup,” she said. “It’s my feast — and I like 
seeing the fruit and pretending I can taste it. And 
then Howard won’t get drunk and recite poetry. Three 
orders, waiter.” 

He took the wine card, but she held it a moment 
longer, as though something had suddenly attracted her 
attention. Their hands had almost touched. 

“Yes — three orders will be enough.” 

The company groaned, but submitted. In reality 
they were too stimulated already by an invisible, exuber- 
ant spirit among them to care much. From where he 
waited for Francey’s order on the threshold of the pantry 
Robert could see and hear them. It was really the old 
days over again. Fundamentally things outside himself 
did not change much. The Brothers Banditti had grown 
up. They were not nice children any more. The inno- 
cent building-ground and nefarious plottings against 
unpopular authority had given place to restaurants and 
more subtle wickednesses. But still Francey played her 
queer, elusive role among them. She was of them — and 
yet she stood a little apart, a little on one side. Prob- 
ably Howard thought himself their real leader. They 
did not talk to her directly very much, nor she to them. 
But all the time they were playing up to her, trying to 
draw her attention to themselves and make her laugh with 
them. She did laugh. It did not seem to matter to her at 
all that they were often crude and blatant and sometimes 
common in their self-expression. She laughed from her 
heart. But her laughter was a little different. It sat 
by itself, an elfish thing, with a touch of seriousness about 
it, its arms hugging its knees, and looked beyond them 
all and saw how much bigger and finer the joke was than 


100 


THE DARK HOUSE 


they thought it. She was the spirit of their good humour. 
They could not have done without her. 

And he, Robert Stonehouse, stood outside the circle, 
as in reality he had always done. But now he did not 
want to belong. He knew now how it hindered men to 
run with the herd — even to have friends. It wasted time 
and strength. And these people were no good anyhow. 
Howard was one of these dissipated duffers who later 
on would settle down as a miraculously respectable and 
incapable G. P. The rest were vague, rattle-brained 
eccentrics who would fizzle out, no one would know how 
or care. 

Only Francey But even in the old days it was 

only because of Francey that the Banditti had meant 
anything to him. 

The head waiter pushed across the counter a jug of 
yellowish liquid in which floated orange peel and a few 
tinned, dubious-looking cherries. 

“Take it, for God’s sake ! People who want muck 
like that ought to keep to Soho.” 

Robert poured out with an eye trained to accurate 
measurements in the laboratory. It was his practice 
to do well everything that he had to do. Otherwise you 
lost tone — you weakened your own fibre so that when the 
big thing came along you slumped. But he could not 
forget Francey Wilmot’s nearness. It did not surprise 
him any more. But it charged him with unrest, and he 
and his unrest frightened him. He knew how to master 
ordinary emotion. Even when he carried off the Franklin 
Scholarship in the teeth of a brilliant opposition he had 
not allowed himself a moment’s triumph. It was aU in 
the day’s work — a single step on the road which he had 
mapped out deliberately. But this was outside his ex- 
perience. It had pounced on him from nowhere, shaking 
him. 

He had to look up at her again. And then he saw 
that she was looking at him too, steadily, with a deep, 
inquiring kindness. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


101 


It was as though she had said aloud: 

“Are you really a good little boy, Robert?” 

The cider poured over the edge of the glass and over 
the table-cloth and in a dismal stream on to the lap of the 
girl with the raffish bRlycock hat. 

“Well, that settles that,” she said good-humouredly. 
“My only skirt, friends. She can’t turn me out in my 
petticoat, can she ? Oh, leave it alone, gan^ong ; it doesn’t 
matter a tinker’s curse ” 

He could not help it. In the midst of his angry con- 
fusion he still had to seek out her verdict on him — just 
as Robert Stonehouse had always done when he had 
been peculiarly heroic or unfortunate. And there it was, 
dancing beneath her gravity, her unforgotten, magic 
laughter. 

At half-past ten Brown’s cleared its last table. Rob- 
ert Stonehouse rolled down his sleeves, picked up the 
parcel which had been placed ready for him on the pantry 
counter, said good-night to the head waiter, who did not 
answer, and with his coat-collar turned up about his ears 
went out in the street. It was quiet as a country lane 
and empty except for the girl who waited beyond the lamp 
light. He knew her instantly, and in turn two sensa- 
tions that were equally foreign and unfamiliar seized him. 
The first was sheer panic, and the second was a sense of 
inevitability. The second was the oddest of the two, 
because he did not believe in Fate, but he did believe in 
his own will. 

It was his own will, therefore, that made him walk 
steadily and indifferently towards her. His head bent as 
though he did not see her. It was really the wind in her 
hair now. It caught the ends of her long, loose coat and 
carried them out behind her. Her slender feet moved 
uncertainly in the circle of lamp-light. Any moment they 
might break into one of the quaint little dances. Or the 
wind might carry her off altogether in a mysterious gust 
down the street and out of sight. It was like his vision of 


102 


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her that evening in Acacia Grove. It made him feel more 
and more imreal and frightened of himself. 

He was almost past her when he spoke. 

“Robert Stonehouse,” she said rather authoritatively, 
as though she expected him to run away ; “Robert Stone- 
house ’’ 

He stopped short with his heart beating in his throat. 
But he did not take the hand that she held out to him. 
He could only stare at her, frowning in his distress, and 
she asked: “You do know who I am, don’t you.?^” 

“Yes. Francey — Francey Wilmot — Miss Wilmot.” 
He forced himself to stop stammering, and added stiffly: 
“I did not know you had recognized me.” 

^‘Didn’t you.f^ I thought Well, I did recognize 

you anyhow. I was so astonished at first that I thought 
it was a sort of materialization. But you were absurdly 
the same. And then when you poured the cider out on 
to poor Gerty’s skirt ” 

“Was that one of my childish customs?” he asked. “I’d 
forgotten.” 

“I nearly stood up and shook hands.” 

“I’m glad you didn’t.” 

“I thought you’d feel like that. I remembered that you 
had been rather a touchy little boy ” 

“I was thinking of your friends. Howard, for in- 
stance.” 

“Why, do you know Howard?” 

“By sight.” 

“If you’ve never even spoken to him you can’t, of course, 
tell what he would have felt. Do you mind walking home 
with me? I don’t live far from here, and we can talk 
better.” 

He held his ground, obstinate and defiant. It was unjust 
that anyone, knowing himself to be brilliantly clever, 
should yet be made an oaf by an incident so trivial. 

“I’m sorry. I don’t see what we can have to talk about. 
I’m not keen on childish recollections. I haven’t time for 
them. And it’s fairly obvious we don’t move in the same 


THE DARK HOUSE 


103 


set and are not likely to meet again.” He burst out 
rudely. “I suppose you were just curious ” 

“Of course. You’d be curious if you found me selling 
flowers in Piccadilly. You’d come up and say: ‘Hallo! 
Prancey, what have you been doing with yourself.?’ And 
you’d have tried to give me a leg up, if it only ran to 
buying a gardenia for old times’ sake.” 

He suspected her of poking fun at him. And yet there 
was that subtle underlying seriousness about her and a 
frank, disarming kindliness. 

“You think I’m down on my luck,” he retorted, “and 
so anybody has a right to butt in.” 

“Not a right. Of course, if I’d met you in Bond 
Street, all sleek and polished, I shouldn’t have dreamed 
of butting in. I should have said to myself, ‘Well, that’s 
the end of the little Robert Stonehouse saga as far as 
I’m concerned,’ and I don’t suppose I should ever have 
thought of you again. But now I shall have to go on 
thinking — and wondering what happened — and worry- 
ing.” She drew her cloak closer about her like a bird fold- 
ing its wings, and added prosaically: “I say, don’t you 
find it rather cold standing about here.?” 

He turned with her and walked on sullenly, his head 
(down to the wind. He thought : “I shall teU her nothing 
at all.” But to his astonishment she was silent, and finally 
he had to speak himself. 

“I’m afraid this silly business has broken up your 
party. Or was it getting too lively for you.? Howard’s 
beanos used to have a considerable reputation.” 

“He often seems drunk when he isn’t,” she returned 
tranquilly. “I think it’s because he enjoys things more 
than most people are able to. It wasn’t that. I wanted 
to see you so much, and I knew Brown’s would be closing 
about now. So I sent them to a theatre. It seemed the 
safest place.” 

“And they went like lambs. But, then, the Banditti 
always did.” 

“Oh, the Banditti!” He guessed that she was smiling 


104 . 


THE DARK HOUSE 


to herself. “The Banditti wouldn’t have grown up like 
that. They were much too nice — never quite really wick- 
ed, were they? Just carried off their feet. Still, they 
were never quite the same after you left. I think they 
always hankered a little after the good old days when 
they rang door-bells and chivied their governesses. Prob- 
ably they will never be so happy again.” 

“They had you. It was you they really cared about. 
Everybody did what you liked.” 

“You didn’t.” 

“I did — in the end.” 

It was odd that they should be both thinking of that 
last encounter and that they should speak of it so guard- 
edly, as though it were still a delicate matter. 

“I didn’t know you were never coming again. I waited 
for you in the afternoon — for weeks and weeks.” 

“Did you?” He looked at her quickly, taken off his 
guard, and then away again with a scornful laugh. “Oh, 
I don’t believe it. You knew I wasn’t nice — not your sort. 
You’re just making it up.” 

“I wonder why you say that?” she asked dispassion- 
ately. “It’s cheap and stupid. You’re not really stupid 
and you weren’t cheap, even if you weren’t nice. And 
you know that I don’t tell lies.” 

For a moment he was too startled and too ashamed to 
answer. Cheap. That was just the word for it. The 
sort of thing that common young men said to their com- 
mon young women. And, of course, he did know. Her 
integrity was a thing you felt. But he could never bring 
himself to tell her that he had been afraid to believe too 
easily, or that he did not want to have to remember her, 
afterwards, waiting there day by day, in their deserted 
playground. It troubled him already, like a vague, in- 
definite pain. 

He did not even apologize. 

“I suppose I should have come back sooner or later. 
But I didn’t have the chance. My father died that night 
— unexpectedly.” He brushed aside her low interjection. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


105 


‘‘Oh, I was jolly glad. But after that we had to clear out. 
There was no money at all.” 

“But you lived in a big house. Your father was a great 
doctor.” 

“I was a great liar,” he retorted impatiently. “I sup- 
pose I wanted to impress you. Perhaps he was a great 
doctor. Anyhow, he never did any work. There was a 
bailiff in the house when he died and a pile of bills. And 
not much else.” 

“What happened, then.^^ Did you go with your step- 
mother.? I remember how you hated her! You wouldn’t 
admit that she was a mother of any sort.” 

“No. I don’t know what became of her. I never saw 
her again after that night. I think she went to live with 
her own people. Christine took care of me.” 

“I don’t remember Christine. I don’t think you ever 
told me about her.” 

“I wouldn’t have known how to explain. I don’t know 
now. She was a sort of friend — ^my father’s and mother’s 
friend. There was an understanding between her and my 
mother — a promise — I don’t know what. So she took me 
away with her. Not that she had any money, either. We 
went to live in two rooms in the suburbs, and she worked 
for us both. She had never worked before — not for 
money — and she wasn’t young. But she did it.” 

“A great sort of friend. And she came through 
too ?” 

He did not answer at once, and he felt her look at him 
quickly, anxiously, as though she had felt him shrink 
back into himself. She heard something in his sdence that 
he did not want her to hear. He put his head down to the 
wind again, hiding a white, hard face. 

“Oh, yes, and we still live in two rooms — over a garage 
in Drayton Mews. My room ‘folds up’ in the day-time, 
and she sits there and knits woollen things for the shops. 
She has to take life easily now. She had an illness, and 
her eyes trouble her. But she’s better — much better. 
And next year everything will be different.” 


106 


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The street had run out into the still shadows of a great 
dim square. For a moment they hesitated like travellers 
on the verge of unknown country; then Francey crossed 
over to the iron-palinged garden and they walked on side 
by side under the trees that rattled their grimy, fleshless 
limbs in an eerie dance. There was no one else stirring. 
The eyes of the stately Georgian houses were already 
closed in the weariness of their sad old age. 

But she asked no questions. She seemed to have drifted 
away from him on a secret journey of her own. He had 
to draw her back — make her realize 

“I shall be a doctor then,” he said challengingly. 

“You said you would be a doctor. We quarrelled about 
it.” 

^‘How you remember things ” 

“You were such a strange little boy. Besides, you 
remember them too.” 

“That’s different. I’ve never had anyone else ” 

He caught himself up. “I suppose you think I’m still 
bragging.?” 

“You never bragged. You always did what you said 
you were going to do — even stupid things, like climbing 
that old wall.” 

So she had seen him, after all. She had watched — 
perhaps a little frightened for him, a little impressed by 
his reckless daring. 

“Oh, well, I admit it didn’t seem likely. People think 
you have to have a lot of money. We’ve often laughed 
about it. For we hadn’t anything except what we saved 
from week to week. And yet we’ve done it. You can do 
anything so long as you don’t mind what you do. It 
depends on the stuff you’re made of.” 

He threw his head up and walked freely, with open 
shoulders. After all, he was proud of those years, and 
had a right to be. They had tested every inch of him, 
and it would have been stupid to pretend that he did not 
know his own mettle. He heard his footsteps ring out 
through the fitful 'whimpering of tiie wind and they 


THE DARK HOUSE 


107 


seemed to mark the rhythm of his life — a steady, resolute 
progression. The lighter fall of Francey Wilmot’s feet 
beside him was like an echo. But yet it had its own 
quality. Not less resolute. 

He heard her say quickly, almost to herself : 

“It must have been hard going — but awfully worth 
while. An adventure. I can’t be sorry for anyone who 
suffers on an adventure — any sort of adventure — even if 
it’s only in oneself.” 

She was more moved than he could understand. But 
the wind, dashed with ice-cold rain, blew them closer to 
one another. He could feel the warmth of her arm 
against his. It was difficult to seem prosaic and casual. 

“That’s just it. Worth while. Why do people want 
^chances’ and ‘equality’ and things made smooth for 
them.?^ What’s the use of anything if there isn’t a top and 
a bottom to it.? What’s the use of having enough to eat 
if you haven’t been hungry.? I’m going to be a doctor, 
and I might have slumped into the gutter. I’m jolly glad 

^there is a gutter to slump into ” He broke off, and 

then went on more deliberately. “Christine and I mapped 
it out one night when I was ten years old. After school 
hours I used to run errands and sell newspapers. On 
half-holidays I went down into the West End and hunted 
taxis for people coming out of theatres. I took my ex- 
ams. and scholarship one after the other. We counted on 
that. I kept on earning in one way or another all through 
my first M.B. and during the two years I’ve walked the 
Wards. Now I’ve had to drop out for a bit to make 
enough to carry through my finals. Christine’s illness 
was the only thing we hadn’t reckoned with.” 

Her voice had an odd, troubling huskiness. 

“You must be frightfully strong. But then you always 
were. You used to beat everyone ” 

“I’m like that now. I’ve got a dozen lives — like a cat. 
And one life doesn’t know what the other one’s doing.” 
He laughed. “Before breakfast I wash down the car of 
the man who owns our garage. The rest of the morning 


108 


THE DARK HOUSE 


I coach fellows for the Matric. In the afternoon I swot 
for mjself. You see how I spend my evenings. Brown’s 
been very decent to me. I get part of my tips and two 
meals — one for myself and one to take home.” He showed 
her the parcel that he carried. “Cold chicken and rice 
mould/’ he said carelesly. “We couldn’t afford that.” 

He did not tell her that there had been times when, to 
keep their compact, they had gone without altogether, 
when Christine had fainted over her typewriter and he 
had watched her from out of a horrible, quivering mist — 
too sick with hunger to help, or even to care much. He 
did not want Francey to be sorry for him. 

“And the tips.?^” she asked, with grave concern. “I 
hope we played the game. But poor old Howard is 
always so hard up ” 

“Oh, good enough. Usually I get more than the others, 
and they hate me for it. I’m quicker and I’ve got clean 
hands. People like that.” 

“I saw your hands first,” Francey said, “and I knew at 
once that you were something different.” 

It was too dark for her to see his face. Yet he turned 
away hastily. He spoke as though he did not care at all. 

“Brown’s a smart fellow. He knows what’s coming, 
and what people are worth to him. We’ve got an agree- 
ment that when I’m Sir Robert I’m to boost the old place 
and do his operations free. I think he’ll be rather sick 
if he doesn’t need any.” 

It was half a joke, but if she had laughed — laughed in 
the wrong way — the chances were that he would have 
turned on his heel and left her without so much as a good- 
night. For he was strung up to an abnormal, cruel sen- 
sitiveness. Whatever else they did, people did not laugh 
at him. He had never given them the chance that he had 
given her. He had learnt to be silent, and now she had 
made him talk and the result had been an uncouth failure. 
He had thrown his hardships at her like a parvenu his 
riches. If she did not see through his crudeness to what 
was real in him, she could only see that he was a rather 


THE DARK HOUSE 


109 


funny young man who swaggered outrageously. And 
that was not to be endured. 

But she did not laugh at all. 

“You’re sure of yourself, Robert.” 

“Yes— I am.” 

“I’m sure of myself, too. Because I’m sure of things 
outside myself.” 

He did not try to understand her. He was wrestling 
with the expression of his own experiences. He threw out 
his free hand and turned it and closed the powerful, slender 
fingers, as though he were moulding some invisible sub- 
stance, 

“Outside things are colourless and lifeless — sort of plas- 
tic stuff — until we get hold of them. We twist them to 
the best shapes we can. Nothing happens to us that isnH 
exactly like ourselves. Even what people call accidents. 
Even a man’s diseases. I’ve seen that in the Wards. 
People die as they live, and they live as they are ” 

And now she did laugh, throwing back her head, and 
he laughed with her, shyly but not resentfully. It was as 
though a crisis in their relationship had been passed. He 
could trust her to understand. And he knew that though 
what he had said was true, it had also sounded young and 
sententious. 

“You think I’m talking rot, don’t you.^*” 

“I only think you’ve changed,” she answered, with a 
quick gravity. “Not outside. Outside you’re just a few 
feet bigger and the round lines have become straight. But 
when you were a little boy you used to cry a good deal.” 

“I don’t see — how did you know.?” 

“I did know. There were certain smears — I don’t think 
you liked having your face washed — and a red, tired 
look under the eyes. The point is that now I can’t im- 
agine your ever having cried at all.” 

“I haven’t.” He calculated solemnly. “Not for more 
than twelve years. I remember, because it was after I 
had played truant at the circus.” 


110 


THE DARK HOUSE 


But he did not want to tell her about the circus. He 
stopped short and looked at his watch in the lamplight. 

“Nearly twelve. We’ve been prowling round this place 
for an hour. I’ve got to get home and work. I thought 
you said you lived near here.” 

“I do. Over the way. The big house. I’ve two rooms 
on the top floor. Rather jolly — and near St. Mary’s ” 

“What — what do you want with St. Mary’s .f”’ 

But she had already begun to cross the road, and the 
wind, coming down a side street with a shriek, sent her 
scudding before it like a leaf. She was half-way up the 
grey stone steps before he overtook her. She turned on 
him, the short ends of her hair flying wickedly. 

“Of course, it’s only right and natural that you should 
talk of nothing but yourself.” 

He stammered breathlessly. 

“I didn’t think — I’m sorry ” 

“Do you suppose you’re the only person who does what 
they say they’re going to do.?^” 

“What — not — not a doctor, Francey.?” 

“Not yet. I’m two years behind you. This will be my 
first year in the Wards. Next year you will be full- 
blown — ^perhaps on the staff — and I shall have to trot 
behind you and believe everything you say.” She smiled 
rather gravely. “You will have got the big stick, after 
all.” 

He looked up at her, holding on to the spiked railing 
that guarded the yawning area. But he had a queer feel- 
ing that he had let go of everything else that he had held 
fast to — that he was gliding down-hill in a reckless aban- 
donment to an unknown feeling. He knew too little of 
emotion to know that he was happy. 

“Why — I shall be there too. I’ll be on a surgical post 
— dresser for old Rogers. And he’s going to take me on 
his private rounds.’' 

It was not what he had meant to say. He had meant 
to say, “We shall see each other.” Perhaps she guessed. 
Her hand rested on his, warm and strong and kind, as 


THE DARK HOUSE 


111 


though nothing had changed at all. Because they were 
grown up she did not hold back in a conventional re- 
serve. If only he could have cried she would have sat 
down on the steps beside him, and put her arm about him 
and comforted him. 

“And I want to meet Christine,” she said. 

He nodded. 

“Rather.” 

“And it’s been fine — our meeting again. But didn’t 
you always know it would happen.^” 

“I believe I did. Yes, I did. I used to imagine ” 

And then he knew and saw that she knew too. He saw 
it in the sudden darkening of her steady eyes, in the per- 
plexity of her drawn brows. He felt it in her hand that 
scarcely moved, as though even now it would not shrink 
from whatever was the truth. It came and went like a 
flare of fire across the storm. And when it had gone, they 
could not believe that it had ever been. They were both 
shaken with astonishment. And yet, hadn’t they always 
known.? 

“Good-night, Robert Stonehouse.” 

“Good-night.” 

But he could not move. He watched the blank door 
open, and her slender shadow stand out for a moment 
against the yellow gas-light of the hall. She did not look 
back. Perhaps she too was spell-bound. The door closed 
with an odd sound as though the house had clicked its 
tongue in good-natured amusement. 

“Now you see how it happens, Robert Stonehouse!” 

At any rate, the spell was broken. Hugging his parcel 
dangerously close he raced back to the shelter of the trees 
and waited. High over head the house opened a bright 
eye at him. He waved back at it with an absurd, in- 
credible boyishness. 

Then he walked on deliberately, firmly. 

What was it he had to set his mind on.? 

Of course. That question of therapeutics 


II 


§1 

DON’T understand it,” Christine said. “It seems to 
^ me better than anything you’ve ever read to me.” 

She counted her stitches for the second time, and looked 
up at the sun that showed its face over the stable roof op- 
posite, as though at a lamp which did not bum as well as 
it used to do. In the dusty golden light she was like a 
figure in a tapestry. Perhaps in its early days it had 
been a trifle crude, a trifle harsh in colour, but now worn 
and threadbare, trembling on decay, it had attained a 
rare and exquisite beauty. 

She smiled back blindly into the little room. 

“Don’t you think so, Robert?” 

Mr. Ricardo also looked at Robert, eagerly, pathet- 
ically. 

“It was to gain your opinion — reinforce my own judg- 
ment — solely for that purpose — difiicult to obtain the 
impartial opinion of a trained mind ” 

He had grown into a habit of talking like that — ^in 
broken disjointed sentences, which only Robert and Chris- 
tine who laiew his thoughts could understand. And now, 
in the midst of his scattered manuscript he waited, rub- 
bing his shiny knees with his thin, grey, not very clean 
hands. 

But Robert looked at Francey. He had sat all the 
time with his arms crossed on the oil-clothed table and 
looked at her, frankly and unconsciously as a savage or 
a street boy might have done. He was too tired to care. 
He had come straight from giving the limousine under- 
neath an extra washing down for the Whitsun holidays 

112 


THE DARK HOUSE 


113 


and oil still lingered in his nails, and there was a faint for- 
gotten smear of it on his cheek, and another near the 
thick upstanding hair where he had rubbed his hand 
across. They came as almost humorous relief in a face 
in which there were things ten years too old — the harsh 
and bony structure showing where there should have been 
a round boyishness, and the full mouth set in a fierce, re- 
lentless negation of itself. But the oil smears and the 
eyes that shone out from under the fair overhanging 
brows were again almost too young. They made the 
strength pathetic. 

He, too, sat in the sunlight, which was not kind to his 
green, threadbare clothes. But the sun only came into 
the stable yard for an hour or two, and as it withdrew it- 
self slowly along the length of the table he shifted his 
position to move with it, unconsciously, like a tired ani- 
mal. Francey, cross-legged and smoking, on the couch 
which at night unfolded itself into a bed, saw the move- 
ment and smiled at him. Her eyes were as steady in their 
serenity as his were steady with hunger. She did not 
change colour, so that whatever she understood from that 
long scrutiny did not trouble her. He leant forward, as 
though he were afraid of missing some subtle half-tone in 
her voice. 

“Mr. Ricardo thinks I’m unprejudiced. He’s for- 
gotten the times when he pulled my ears and smacked my 
head. But you are different, Francey. You can say what 
you think.” 

“But it wouldn’t be at all helpful,” she answered very 
solemnly. “To begin with, I have the scientific mind, and 
I cannot accept as a basis of argument an entirely un- 
tested hypothesis.” 

Connie Edwards thereupon gave vent to an artificial 
groan of anguish, followed by an explosive giggle which 
would have lost her her half of Rufus Cosgrave’s chair had 
he not put his arm round her. There were only three 
chairs in the room, and as two of them had been already 
occupied when she and her companion had, as she ex- 


114 


THE DARK HOUSE 


pressrf it, ^‘blown in” half an hour previously, they had 
perched together, listening with clasped hands and an air 
of insincere solemnity. For Mr. Ricardo had not stopped 
reading. He had gone on as though he had not heard 
their boisterous entry, and even now would have seemed 
unaware of their existence but for something bitter and 
antagonistic in the hunch of his thin shoulders. His dark, 
biting eyes avoided them like those of a sullen child who 
does not want to see. But Miss Edwards appeared to be 
not easily depressed. She waved her hand in friendly 
thanks for the cigarette case which Francey tossed across 
to her, and, having selected her cigarette with blunt, vi- 
ciously manicured fingers, poked Cosgrave for a match. 

‘‘Gawd Almighty, and Little Connie K.O.’ed in the 

first round by an untested hypo — hypo What was 

it. Ruffles dear.?^ (Oh, do stop squeezing my hand! This 
isn’t the pictures, and it’s a match I want — not love.) 
An untested hypothesis. Thank you, dearie. I wonder 
if He’s feeling as sore about it as I am.?”’ 

She gurgled over her cigarette, and Cosgrave smiled at 
everyone in turn, as though he had said aloud, “Isn’t she 
a splendid joke.?*” He looked almost mystically happy. 

“Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven,” Mr. Ricardo 
muttered. “Mark it, mark it, Robert — the shallow think- 
ing, shallow jesting, shallow living ” 

Miss Edwards winked at Francey, and Francey looked 
back at her with her understanding kindliness. It seemed 
to Robert that ever since Connie Edwards had burst into 
the room Francey had changed. The change was subtle 
and difficult to lay hold of, like Francey herself. Mentally 
she was always moving about, quietly, light-footedly, just 
as she had done among the bricks and rubble of their old 
playground, peering thoughtfully at things which nobody 
else saw or looking at them from some new point of view. 
You couldn’t be sure what they were or why they inter- 
ested her. And now — ^he had almost seen her do it — she 
had shifted her position, come over to Connie Edward’s 
side, and was gazing over her shoulder, with her own 


THE DARK HOUSE 


115 


brown head tilted a little on one ear, and was saying in 
Connie’s vernacular: 

“Well, so that’s how it looks to you? And, I say, 
you’re right. It’s a scream ” 

In her mysterious way she had found something she 
liked in Connie Edwards, with her awful hat and her out- 
rageous, three-inch heels and her common prettiness. 
Cosgrave obviously was crazy about her. He seemed to 
cling to her because she had an insatiable hunger for the 
things he couldn’t afford. One could soe that he had tried 
to model himself to her taste. He wore a gardenia and 
a spotted tie. And, bearing these insignia of vulgarity, 
he looked more than ever pathetic and over-delicate. 

Cosgrave was an idiot who had lost his balance. But 
Francey was another matter. The Francey who had 
asked “And are you a good little boy?” accepted Connie 
Edwards without question. Because it was ridiculous to 
be hurt about it Robert grew angry with her and frowned 
away from her, and talked to Mr. Ricardo as though 
there were no one else in the room. 

“I can’t think why they didn’t take it, sir. It’s fine 
stuff. A shade too long for a magazine article. It may 
have been that, of course.” 

But Mr. Ricardo bent down and began to gather up 
his manuscript. The paper was of all, kinds and sizes, 
covered with crabbed writing and fierce erasures. It was 
oddly like himselfi — disordered, a little desperate, not very 
clean. When he had all the sheets together he sat with 
them hugged against his breast and bent closer to Chris- 
tine, speaking in mysterious whisper. 

“It’s not that. Robert knows it isn’t, but he doesn’t 
care any more. He’ll say anything. But I know. I’ve 
guessed it a long time. People have found out. They 
say to one another, when I send in my papers, ‘This man 
is a liar. Every morning of his life he gives his assent 
to lies. And now he is going to teach the very lies he 
pretends to exterminate. We can’t have anything to do 
with a man like that.’ And there’s a conspiracy, Miss 


116 


THE DARK HOUSE 


Christine, a conspiracy ” His voice began to rise 

and tremble. “They’ve taken me off my old classes under 
the pretext that they are too much for me. They’ve set 
me on to Scripture. Then they told me I had to remem- 
ber — remember circumstances — to prevent myself from 
saying what I thought of such devilish cruelty. But I 
saw that they wanted me to break out so that they could 
get rid of me altogether, and I held my tongue. One of 
these days, though, I shall stand up in the open places 
and tell the truth. I shall say what they have done to 
me ” 

He had forgotten, if he had ever fully realized, that 
there were strangers about him. He shook his fist and 
shouted, whilst the slow, hopeless tears rolled down the 
sunken yellow cheeks onto the dirty manuscript. 

They stared at him in consternation, all but Francey, 
who uncurled herself negligently and slid from the sofa. 

“It’s past my tea-time,” she announced, “and I want 
my tea.” 

It was as though she had neither seen nor cared. 
Christine turned her faded, groping eyes thankfully in 
her direction. 

“Of course, my dear. Robert — please 

“No,” he said; “we don’t have tea, Francey.” 

“But, Robert, at least when we have guests ” 

“Or guests,” he added, with a set, white face. 

Cosgrave laughed. He made a comic grimace. He 
seemed utterly irrepressible and irresponsible, like a colt 
let out for the first time in a wide field. 

“You don’t know this fellow like I do. Miss Wilmot. 
A nasty Spartan. But if you’ll put a shilling in the gas 
meter we’ll get cakes and a quarter of tea. He doesn’t 
need to have any if he doesn’t want it, but he can’t grudge 
us a corner of table and half a chair each. Miss Chris- 
tine’s on our side, aren’t you. Miss Christine And 
oh, Connie, there’s a pastrycook’s round the corner where 
they make jam-puffs like they did when I was a kid 

“I’ll put the kettle on,” Francey said, nodding to him. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


117 


She passed close to Robert. She even gave him a quick, 
friendly touch. He could almost hear her say, “Tag, 
Robert!” but he would not look at her. And yet the 
moment after he knew that it was all make-believe. His 
anger was a sham, protecting something that was fragile 
and afraid of pain. Now that she had gone out of the 
barren little room she had taken with her the sense of a 
secret, gracious intimacy which had been its warmth and 
colour. He saw that the sunlight had shrunk to a pale 
gold finger whose tip rested lingeringly on the window- 
sill, and he felt tired and cold and work-soiled. 

He got up and followed her awkwardly, with a sullen 
face and a childishly beating heart. The kettle was 
already on the gas, and Francey gazing into an open cup- 
board that was scarcely smaller than the kitchen itself. 

“It’s like a boy’s chemist shop,” she said casually, as 
though she had expected him, “with the doses done up 
in little white paper packets. Is it a game, Robert 

“A sort of game. We used to use too much of every- 
thing, and at the end of the week there’d be nothing left. 
So we doled it out like that.” 

“Yes, I see. A jolly good idea. That way you couldn’t 
over-eat yourselves.” 

“I — I suppose you think I was an awful beast about 
the tea, don’t you.?^” 

“No, I didn’t— I don’t.” 

“I was — much firmer than I would have been, but I 
wanted you to stay. So I couldn’t give in.” 

“If it had been just Cosgrave and Miss Edwards.?” 

“It wouldn’t have mattered — not so much.” 

“I wasn’t hurt. It was tactless of me. But I wanted 
the tea. I forgot. And I wanted to stay, too. I haven’t 
learnt to do without things that I want.” 

“You think I don’t want them.?” 

She closed the cupboard door abruptly. The kitchen 
was so small that when she turned they had to stand close 
to one another to avoid falling back into the sink or 
burning themselves against the gas jet. He saw that the 


118 


THE DARK HOUSE 


fine colour had gone out of her face. She looked un- 
familiarly tired. 

“I think you want them terribly. I suppose I’m not 
heroic. I don’t like your saying ‘No’ always — always.” 

“I shall get what I really want in the end.” 

She sighed, reflected, and then laughed rather ruefully. 

“Oh, well, get the cups now, at any rate.’^ 

“There are only three, Francey.” 

“You and I will have to share, then.’^ 

So she made him happy — ^just as she had done when 
they had been children — ^with a sudden comradely gesture. 

But in the next room Mr. Ricardo had begun to talk 
again. They had to hear him. He was not crying any 
more. His voice sounded hard and embittered. 

“He’s changed. He doesn’t care. He pretended to 
listen. He was looking at that girl. She’s a strange girl. 
I don’t trust her. She believes in myths. Oh, yes, I 
know. She did not say so, but I can smell out an enemy. 
She will try to wreck everything. So it is in life. We give 
everything — sacrifice everything — to pass on our knowl- 
edge, our experience, and in the end they break away 
from us — they go their own road.” 

Robert could not hear Christine’s answer. He felt that 
Ricardo had thrown out his arms in one of his wild 
gestures. “Not gratitude — ^not gratitude. He was to 
have carried on my fight. To have been free as I am 
not ” 

Miss Edwards and Rufus Cosgrave came racketing 
back up the steep and creaking stairs. It was like the 
whirlwind entry of some boisterous comet dragging at its 
rear a bewildered, happy tail. They were as exultant as 
though their paper bags contained priceless loot rescued 
from overwhelming forces. 

“Hurry up there, Mr. Stonehouse. Don’t keep the 
lady waiting. Tea and puff, as ordered, ma’am. No, 
ma’am, no tipping allowed in this establishment. But 
anything left under the plate will be sent to the Society 
for the Cure of the Grouch among Superior Waiters.” 


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119 


She jollied Christine, whose answering smile was like 
a little puzzled ghost. She flourished a heavily scented 
handkerchief in the professional manner and grinned at 
Robert, whose open hostility did not so much as ruffle 
the fringe of her good humour. In her raffish, rakish 
world poverty and wry, eccentric-tempered people 
abounded, and were just part of an enormous joke. And 
Rufus Cosgrave, who gaped at her in wonder and admira- 
tion, saw that she was right. Poor old Robert and exams, 
and beastly, bullying fathers and hard-upness — the latter 
more especially — were all supremely funny. 

But Robert would not look at the jam-pufF which she 
pushed across to him. 

“Thanks. I hate the beastly stuff.” 

And yet it was a flaky thing, oozing, as Rufus had 
declared, with real raspberry jam. And he was very 
young. But he would not give way. Could not. It 
seemed trivial, and yet it was vital, too. There was 
something in him which stood up straight and unbend- 
able. Once broken it could never be set up again. And 
gradually a sense of loneliness crept over him. He went 
and stood next Ricardo, who, like himself, would have 
no share in the festivity. And the old man blinked up at 
him with a kind of triumph. 

“And we’re going to a hill that I know of,” Francey 
was saying. “No one else knows of it. In fact, it’s only 
there when I am. You go by train, and after that you 
have to walk. I don’t know the way. It comes by inspira- 
tion. When you get to the top you can see the whole of 
England, and there are always flowers. I’m taking 
Howard’s gang, and you people must come along too. 
It’s what you want. A good time 

'"All the time,” said Miss Edwards, blowing away the 
crumbs. 

“My people are going in a char-a-banc to Brighton,” 
Rufus said. “But I’ll give them the slip. There’s sure 
to be a beastly row anyhow.” 

“That’s my brave boy! Who cares for rows.?^ Take 


120 


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me. Our Mr. Reilly’s had the nerve to fix up a rehearsal 
for the new French dame what’s coming to ginger up our 
show — and, oh, believe me, it needs it — but am I down- 
hearted No! Anyway, if she’s half the stuff they say 
she is they’ll never notice poor little Connie’s gone to bury 
her fifth grandmother. So I’ll be with you, lady, and 
kind regards and many thanks.” 

“And you, too. Miss Forsyth.?’^ 

Christine shook her head. She was frowning up out 
of the open window a little anxiously. 

“What would you do with a tired old woman.?” 

“Ruffles will carry you. Throw out your chest. Ruffles, 
and look fierce. What’s the use of a hefty brute like that 
if it isn’t useful.?” 

“And when you’re on my hill,” Francey said with a 
mysterious nod, “you’ll understand it better than any of 
us.” She looked away from the grey, upturned face. She 
added almost to herself : “How dark it is here I The sun 
has gone down behind the roof.” 

“Has it.? Yes, it went so suddenly. I wondered” — 
she picked up her knitting, and began to roll it together — 
“if Robert could go.?” she murmured. 

“Robert can go. I knew before I asked.’^ 

But he flung round on her in a burst of extraordinary 
resentment. 

“I can’t. You seem to think I can do anything and 
everything that comes into your head. People like you 
never really understand. We’re poor. We haven’t the 
money or the time to — to fool round. Nor has Cosgrave, 
but he likes to pretend — humbug himself and anyone else 
silly enough to believe in him.” 

It was as though something long smouldering amongst 
them had blazed up. Cosgrave banged the table with his 
clenched fist. His freckles were like small suns shining 
out of his dead-white face. 

“You — you leave me alone, Stonehouse. I — I’m n-not 
a kid any more. And I d-don’t pretend. Connie knows 
I haven’t a c-cent in the world except what poor mother 


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121 


sneaks out of the housekeeping. But I’m s-sick of living 
as I’ve done — always grinding, always afraid of every- 
thing. If I c-can’t have my fun out of life I d-don’t want 
to Kve at all. I’m not going to Heaven to make up for 
it — Mr. Ricardo has just told us that — so what’s the use? 
You’ve g-got your work and that satisfies you. Mine 
doesn’t satisfy me. So when you t-talk about me — you’re 
just t-talking through your hat.” 

Miss Edwards threw up her hands in mock horror. 

‘‘Oh, my angel child, what a temper! And to think I 
nearly married him!” 

She choked with laughter. And underneath the thin 
flooring, as though roused by her irreverent merriment, 
the big car shook itself awake with a roar and splutter of 
indignation. But the sliding doors were thrown open, 
and its rage died down at the prospect of release. It 
began to purr complacently, greedily. 

It was strange how the sound quieted them. They 
looked towards the window as though for the first time 
they were aware of something outside that came to them 
from beyond the low, confining roofs — a spring wind 
blowing from far-off places. 

“Six cylinder,” Cosgrave muttered with feverish eyes. 
“Do you know, if I had that thing living under me I’d — 
I’d go off with it one night, and I’d go on and on and never 
come back.” 

Connie Edwards patted his head. She winked at 
Francey, but Francey was looking at Robert’s sullen 
back. 

“No, you wouldn’t. Not for six months or so, 
anyhow.” 

He laughed shamefacedly. 

“Oh, well, of course I’m rotting. I can’t drive a go- 
cart. Never had the chance. Oh, I say, Robert, don’t 
grouch. I didn’t mean to be rude. Of course, you’re 
right in a way. But I get that sort of stuff at home, and 
if I get it here I don’t know what I’ll do.” 


122 


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‘‘Oh, you’re right, too,” Robert muttered. “It’s not 
my business,” 

Cosgrave appealed sadly to Francey. 

“He’s wild with me. But a picnic^ — ^you’d think any 
human being might go on a picnic ” 

“You’re going,” she answered quietly, “and Robert 
too.” 

He did not take up the challenge. He was too miser- 
able. He had not meant to break out like that. As in 
the old days, he hungered for her approval, her good 
smile of understanding. But as in the old days, too, be- 
neath it all, was the dim consciousness of an antagonism, 
of their two wills poised against one another. 

The car purred louder with exultation. It came slid- 
ing out into the narrow, cobbled street. It waited a 
moment, gathering itself together. 

“I wonder where it’s going,” Cosgrave dreamed. “I 
hope a jolly long way — right to the other end of England. 
I’d like to think of it going on and on through the whole 
world.” 

Christine leaned forward, peering out dimly. 

“Are the trees out yet, Robert.?”’ 

They looked at her in silence. It was a strange thing 
to ask. And yet not strange at all. All day long she 
sat there and saw nothing but the squat, red-faced stable 
opposite. Or if she went out it was to buy cheaply from 
the barrows in a mean side street. And now she was 
remembering that there were trees somewhere, perhaps in 
bloom. 

Even Miss Edwards looked queerly dashed and dis- 
tressed. 

“Now you’re asking something. Miss Forsyth. There 
are trees in this little old village, but they aren’t real 
somehow, and I never notice ’em. Well, we’ll know on 
Monday. Please Heaven, it doesn’t rain.” 

“I want to get out,” Cosgrave muttered ; “out of here — 
right away ” 

“I’ve not had a picnic — not since I was a kid. But I 


THE DARK HOUSE 


123 


haven’t forgotten it, though. Heaps to eat — and an ap- 
petite Oh, my !” 

‘‘And you can go on eating and eating,” Francey added 
greedily, “and it doesn’t seem to matter.” 

“Egg and cress sandwiches ” 

“Ham pie ” 

“Sardines ” 

“Russian salad — mayonnaise ” 

“And something jolly in a bottle.” 

They laughed at one another. But after that the quiet 
returned again. Francey sat with her hands clasped 
behind her head and her chair tip-tilted against the wall. 
To Robert, who watched her from out of the shadow, she 
seemed to be drifting farther and farther away on a 
dark, quiet, flowing river. 

It grew to dusk. The car had long since set out on its 
unknown journey. The narrow street with its pungent 
stable odour had sunk into one of those deep silences 
which lie scattered like secret pools along the route of 
London’s endless processions. And presently Mr. Ri- 
cardo, who had not moved or spoken, but had sat hunched 
together like a captive bird, leant forward wdth his 
finger to his lips. 

Christine had fallen asleep. Her hands lay folded upon 
her work and her face was still lifted to the black ridge 
of roof where the sun had vanished. There was enchant- 
ment about her sleep, as though in the very midst of them 
she had begun to live a new, mysterious life of her own. 
She had been the shadowy onlooker. She became the 
central figure among them. 

Mr. Ricardo rose noiselessly. He looked at no one. 
He passed them like a ghost. They heard him creeping 
down the stairs and his hurrying, unequal footsteps on 
the empty street. Cosgrave and Connie Edwards nodded 
to one another and took hands and were gone. Francey, 
too, slipped to her feet. She gathered up her hat and 
coat, her silence effortless. She did not so much as glance 


124 


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at Robert, but at the head of the steep, ladder-like stairs 
he overtook her, 

“Francey — listen ” 

With one foot on the lower step, her back against the 
wall, she waited for him. It was too dark for them to see 
each other clearly. They were shadows to one another. 
They spoke in whispers, as though they were afraid of 
waking something more than the sleeper in the room 
behind them. He could not have told how he knew that 
her face was wet. 

‘T wanted to say — I don’t know why I behaved like 
that. I’m not usually — ^nervy — uncontrolled. I don’t 
think I’ve ever lost my temper before. I’ve had so little 
to do with people. Perhaps that’s it. I’ve gone my own 
way alone ” 

“And now that our ways have crossed,” she began with 
a sad irony. 

“No — not crossed — come together — run out together 

into the high-road ” He clenched his hands till 

they were bloodless in the effort to speak. “You see, a 
few weeks ago I wouldn’t have lost my temper — and I 

wouldn’t have said queer, silly things like this I’m 

a sort of kaleidoscope that someone’s shaken up. I 
don’t know myself; things have been hard — but awfully 
simple. I’ve only thought of — wanted — the one thing. 
It doesn’t seem to me that I’ve had to fight until now. 
You don’t understand — ^what it has been ” 

“I do — I do!” she interrupted hurriedly. “I’ve seen 
Christine — and the way you live — and that dreadful cup- 
board. Oh, I’m not sorry for you — only afraid. You’re 
nothing but a boy ” 

“You needn’t be afraid. I’ll puU through. It^s only 
another year now. But I can’t be like* the other people 
you know — ^who can be jolly and easy-going — ^because 
they’re not going anywhere at all. Can’t you be patient, 
Francey.?’^ 

“Was I impatient.?” He felt her humour flicker up 
like a flame in the darkness. “I suppose I was. It was 


THE DARK HOUSE 


125 


the jam-pufF. You hurt their feelings. And it was such 
a little thing.” 

“I hate jam-puffs,” he said, but humbly, because it 
was not the truth, and he could never explain. 

‘‘Come with us, Robert.” 

“I can’t.” 

“But you want to come.?” 

“That’s just it. I don’t know why. It would be 
waste of time — money — everything — all wrong. What 
have I to do with Howard and that lot — with girls like 
Connie Edwards .?” 

“ — and me,” she added, smiling to herself. 

“Or you with them.?” 

“Oh, they’re my friends. As you say, they’re not 
going anywhere — ^just dawdling along and picking up 
things by the wayside — queer, interesting things ” 

“I’ve no use for them,” he said doggedly. 

“ — And Christine wanted to go.” She added after a 
moment, gently, as though she were feeling through the 
dark, “ — is dying to go, Robert.” 

“You’re just imagining it. She’s never cared for 
things like that — only for my getting ahead with my 
work — my finals.” 

“Didn’t you hear her ask about the trees ?” 

He looked back over his shoulder like a suddenly fright- 
ened child. 

“Yes. It — it didn’t mean anything, though. It was 
just for something to say.” 

“She said a great deal more than she meant to.” 

“We’ve mapped out everything — every ha’penny — 
every minute.” 

“Let me help, Robert. I’ve got such a lot. I’ve no 
one else. I could make it easier for you both. I should 
be happier, too. And you could pay me back afterwards 
with interest — a hundred per cent. — I don’t care what.” 

But now feeling through the dark she had reached 
the barrier. He answered stonily. 


126 


THE DARK HOUSE 


“Thanks. We’ve never owed anything. We shan’t 
begin now.” 

She slipped into her coat. She tugged her soft hat 
down over her hair. There was more than anger in her 
quick, impatient movements. She was going because she 
couldn’t bear it any more. She had given in. She would 
never come back. And at that fear he broke out with a 
desperate cunning. 

“It’s too bad to be angry with me. I — I want to go.” 

“And I’ve asked you ” 

“Because you want me?” 

“Of course. It will be the first chance we’ve had to 
really talk ” 

“It can’t matter — ^just for once,” he pleaded with 
himself. 

“It might matter a great deal.” 

She went on down the stairs, very slowly, lingeringly. 
He leant over the creaking banisters, trying to see her. 

“Francey — ^you duffer — you haven’t even told me where 
to meet you.” 

“Paddington — the Booking Office — 10.15.’^ 

He held his breath. Her voice had sounded like that of 
a spirit laughing out of the black veil beneath. It did 
not come again. He could not even hear her footsteps. 
She had vanished. But he waited, trembling before the 
wonder of his own impulse. 

Supposing he had yielded — ^had taken her hands and 
kissed them — kissed that pale, beloved face, he who had 
ne\er kissed anyone but Christine since his mother died? 

He had not done it. It had been too difficult to yield. 
But he stood there, dreaming, with his hot eyes pressed 
into his hands, whilst out of the magic quiet rose wave 
after wave of enchantment, engulfing him. 

§2 

They agreed that Francey had not boasted about her 
hill. It stood up boldly out of the rolling sea of field and 


THE DARK HOUSE 


127 


common land and was tree-crowned, with primroses shin- 
ing amongst the young grass. From its summit they 
could see toy villages and church spires and motors and 
char-a-bancs running like alarmed insects along the white, 
winding lanes. But apparently no one saw the hill. 
No one came to it. Since it was everything that picnic 
parties demanded in the way of a hill, it was only reason- 
able to accept Francey’s theory that it was not really 
there at all — or at most only there for her particular 
convenience. 

They spread their table-cloth on its slope and under 
the dappled shadows of the half-fledged trees, with 
Christine presiding on the high ground. Her wispy grey 
hair fluttered out from under the wide black hat, and she 
looked pretty and pathetic, with her shabby black bag 
and her old umbrella, like a witch, as Howard said, who 
had been caught whilst absent-mindedly gathering toad- 
stools and carried here in triumph to bless their mortal 
festivity. 

‘‘The umbrella keeps off rain,” he explained mysteri- 
ously, “and besides that, it’s a necromantic Handley-Page 
which might fly off with her at any minute. When you 
see it opening, stand clear and hold on to yourselves.” 

He made a limerick on this particular fancy. It was 
a very bad limerick, as bad, probably, as his theories on 
pyridine and its relation to the alkaloids which had floored 
him in his last exam. ; but the Gang applauded enthusiasti- 
cally, and drank to Christine out of mugs of beer. Un- 
licked and cynical as they were, they seemed to have a 
chivalrous tenderness for her. And she was at home 
among them — silent, smiling wistfully down upon their 
commonplace eccentricities, as though through the mist 
of her coming blindness they were somehow lovable. 

They ate outrageously of fearsome things. Yet over 
her third meringue Connie Edwards broke down with 
lamentations for the lost powers of youth. 

“I can remember eating five of ’em,” she said, “and 


128 


THE DARK HOUSE 


coming home to a tea of winkles and bloater paste. Oh 
Gawd ! I’ll be in my grave before I can turn round.” 

She had been from the start in an unusually pensive 
and philosophic mood — a trifle wide-eyed and even awe- 
struck. It seemed that the night before the ‘‘French 
dame” had appeared unexpectedly during a rehearsal — 
a peculiarly gingerless performance according to Connie’s 
account — -and had watched from the wdngs awhile, and 
then, unasked and apparently without premeditation, had 
broken in among them and at the edge of the footlights, 
to a gaping, empty theatre, had danced and sung a little 
song. 

“A French song,” Connie said solemnly. “Not a word 
of the blessed thing could we understand, and yet we 
were all hugging ourselves. Not pretty either — a mere 
bone and a yank of hair — and no more voice than a spar- 
row. But you just went along too. Couldn’t help it. 
And afterwards we played up as though we liked it, and 
hadn’t been plugging at the rottenest show in England 
for the last ten weeks. And she laughed and clapped her 
hands, and our tongues hung out we were that pleased. 
She’s It, friends. It. Gyp Labelle from the Folies 
Bergeres and absolutely It.” 

Rufus Cosgrave rolled over on his face and lay blink- 
ing out of the long grass like a sleepy, red-headed satyr. 

“Gyp Labelle,” he said drowsily, “Gyp Labelle!” 

Robert knew that he was thinking of the Circus. And 
he did not want to think about the Circus. He pushed 
the memory from him. He was glad when Howard said 
gravely : 

“That’s genius. That’s what we poor devils pray to 
and pray for. We know we haven’t got it, but we’re 
always hoping that if we agonize and sweat long enough, 
one day God will lean out of His cloud and tou(5i us with 
His finger.” 

“Michael Angelo,” said Gertie Sumners, with a kind of 
sombre triumph. “The Sistine Chapel. I’ve got a print 
of it in my room. That’s where you saw it.” She leaned 


THE DARK HOUSE 


129 


back against a tree trunk with her knees drawn up to 
her chin, and blew out clouds of smoke, and looked more 
than usually grey and dishevelled and in need of a bath. 
“In a way it’s like that with Jeffries. He rubs his beastly 
old thumb over my rottenest charcoal sketch, and it’s a 
masterpiece.’’ 

Robert, lying outstretched at Francey’s feet, wondered 
at them — at their talk of genius in connection with a 
revue star and a smudgy, underpaid studio hack, more 
still at their reverence for a God in Whom they certainly 
did not believe. 

Miss Edwards snatched off her cartwheel hat smothered 
with impossible poppies, and sent it spinning down the 

hdl. 

“What’s the good.?^” she demanded fiercely. “We’re just 
nothing at all. We’re yoiing now. But when we aren’t 
young, what’s going to happen to the bunch of us.^^” 

“This is a picnic,” Howard reminded her. “Not a 
funeral. You haven’t eaten enough. Have a pickle.” 

But the shadow lingered. It was like the shadow 
thrown by the white clouds riding the light spring wind. 
It put out the flaming colours of the grass and flowers. 
It was as though winter, slinking sullenly to its lair, 
showed its teeth at them in sinister reminder. Then it 
was gone. It was difficult to believe it could return. 

Robert looked up shyly into Francey’s face, and she 
smiled down at him with her warm eyes. They had 
scarcely spoken to one another, but something delicate 
and exquisite had been born between them in their silence. 
He was afraid to tpuch it, and afraid almost to move. 
He felt very close to her, very sure that she was living 
with him, withdrawn secretly from the rest into the 
strange world that he had discovered. He was happy. 
And happiness like this was new to him and terrifying. 
He was like a waif from the streets, pale and gaunt and 
young, with dazzled eyes gazing for the first time into 
great distances. 

«Italy — ” Gertie Sumners muttered. She threw away 


130 


THE DARK HOUSE 


her cigarette, and sat with her sickly face between her 
hands. “I’ve got to get there before I die. Think of 
all the swine that hoof about the Sistine Chapel yawning 
their fat heads off, and me who’d give my immortal soul 
for an hour ” 

“You’ll go,” Howard said, blinking kindly at her. “I’ll 
take you. We’ll get out of this for good and all. I’ll bust 
a bank or forge a cheque. You’ve got the divine right to 
go, old dear!” 

Robert stirred, drawing himself a little nearer to 
Francey, touching her rough tweed skirt humbly, secretly, 
as a Catholic might touch a sacred relic for comfort and 
protection. They were talking a language that he could 
not understand — they were occupied with things that he 
despised, not knowing what they were; they made him 
ashamed of his ignorance and angry with his shame. He 
could not free himself of his first conviction that they 
were really the Banditti — inferior children, who yet had 
something that he had not. He was cleverer than they were. 
He would be a great man when they had wilted from their 
brief, shallow-soiled youth to a handful of dry stubble. 
(This Gertie Sumners would not even live long. He 
recognized already the thumb-marks of disease in her 
sunken cheeks.) And yet he was an outsider, blundering 
in their wake. Just because they accepted him, taking 
it for granted he was one of them, they deepened his isola- 
tion. He could not talk their talk. He could not play 
with them. He had tried. The old hunger “to belong’^ 
had driven him. But he was stiff with strength and 
clumsy with purpose. If he and Francey had not belonged 
to one another, he would have been overwhelmed in lone- 
liness. 

He shut his ears against them. But when she spoke 
he had to listen — ^jealously, fearfully. 

“It would be no use, Howard. You’d come back. You 
can’t strip off your nationality like an old-fashioned coat 
and throw it away. All this — isn’t it English and differ- 
ent from any other country in the world — deeply, deeply 


THE DARK HOUSE 


131 


idifferent, just as we are different? England — she’s a 
human, lovely woman, quiet and broad-bosomed, busy 
about her home, and only sometimes, in the spring and 
autumn, she stops a little to dream her mystic dreams. 
In the summer and winter she pretends to forget. She’s 
anxious about many things^ — how she shall keep us warm 
and fed — a little stupid-seeming, with wells of all sorts of 
kindly wisdom. 

“And Italy — the saint, the austere spirit, close to God, 
preparing herself for God, with unspeakable visions of 
Him. Where I lived” — she made a sudden passionate 
gesture of delight — “we looked over the Campagna, and 
there were three hills close to one another with towns 
perched on their crest, as far from the world and comfort 
as they could get. And at night they were like the three 
kings with their golden crowns and dark flowing robes, 
waiting for God to show them the sign. 

“But we build our towns in the valleys and sheltered 
places. We like our trains to be punctual, and to do 
things in decent order. We pretend to be a practical 
and reasonable people. We’re of our soil. In Italy what 
do trains matter — or when they come and go — when, even 
to those who don’t believe in Him at all, it’s only God who 
matters?” She laughed, shaking herself free. “So you’ll 
come back, Howard — ^because you’re part of all this. 
You’ll always hate waiting for your train, and you’ll 
always be a little ashamed of your dreams. And you’ll 
never be real anywhere else.” 

Howard applauded solemnly. 

“I’ll make a poem of that — one day, when I’m awfully 
drunk, and don’t know what I’m doing.” 

But Robert sat up sharply, frowning at her, white, 
almost accusing. 

“When did you live in Italy, Francey?” 

“Last year — all last year.” 

“You mean — you chucked your work — everything — 
just to play round ?” 

Howard yawned prodigiously. 


132 


THE DARK HOUSE 


^‘You don’t get our Francey’s point of view, Stone- 
house. You don’t understand.” 

“Just to play round,” she echoed to herself. Then she 
laughed and unclasped her hands from about her knees 
and stood up effortlessly, stretching out her arms like a 
sleepy child. “And now I’m going to gather sticks for a 
fire and primroses to take home. Coming Robert.^” 

“No,” he muttered. 

Howard rolled over in the grass. 

“Sulky young idiot — if I wasn’t half asleep — or I’d 
been asked ” 

His voice died into an unintelligible murmur. 

So she went alone. The rest, heavy with food and 
sunshine, nibbled jadedly at the renmants of the feast, 
exchanging broken, drowsy comments. Perhaps Gertie 
Sumners was brooding over the three kings with their 
golden crowns. But Robert knelt and watched Francey 
run down the hill-side, faster and faster, like a brown 
shadow. There was a thick belt of beech trees at the 
bottom, and she ran into them and was lost. 

He rose stiffly. He did not want the others to see — 
he did not want to know himself, that he was following 
her. He strolled indolently about the crest of the hill, 
whistling to the breeze, his eyes hunting the wood be- 
neath like the eyes of a young setter at heel. But when 
at last he was out of sight he slipped his leash and was off, 
running recklessly, headlong. The hill rose up behind him 
and sent him down its hillocky slopes as though before the 
horns of an avalanche. The wind blew the scent of trees 
and flowers and young grass against his burning face. It 
was like draughts of a cold, clear wine. It was like 
running full-tilt down Acacia Grove leaping and 
whooping. 

It was frightening, too — a hand fumbling at the heart 
— this fierce coming to life of something dormant, this 
breaking free 

The wood had swallowed her. He drew up panting 
in the cool twilight. Beyond the faint breathing of the 


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133 


leaves overhead and the secret movement of hidden things, 
there was no sound. He walked on quickly. At first it 
was only suspense, childish, thrilling. Then it was more 
than that. His heart began to beat quickly. He tried 
to call her, but the quiet daunted him. The wood was a 
still, green pool into which she had dropped and vanished. 
It was an enchanted wood. There was enchantment all 
about her. They had seemed so near to one another — 
and then in a moment she had slipped away from him into 
a life of her own where he could not follow. 

He had to find her and hold her fast. Nothing else 
mattered — ^neither his work, nor his career, nor Christine. 
It was terrible how little they seemed now — a handful 
of dust — beside this mounting, imperative desire. He had 
been so invulnerable. In wanting nothing but what was in 
himself he had been able to defy exterior events. Now he 
was stripped of his defence. He could be hurt. He could 
be made desperately happy or unhappy by things which 
he had thought trivial and purposeless — the playthings of 
inferior children. 

He came upon her suddenly. She knelt in the long 
grass, idle, with a few scattered primroses in her lap as 
though in the midst of gathering them she had been over- 
taken by a dream. He called her by name, angrily, be- 
cause of what he suffered. He stumbled to her and fiung 
himself down beside her and held her close to him, ruthless 
with desire and his child’s fear. 

In that sheer physical explosion his whole personality 
blazed up and seemed to melt away, fiowing into new 
form. He had dashed down the hiU, a crude, exultant 
boy, into the whole storm and mystery of manhood. And 
for all his fierceness his heart was small within him, afraid 
of her, and of itself, and its own hunger. 

At last he let her go. He tore himself from her and 
dropped face down in the grass, trembling with grief and 
shame. He heard her say: ‘‘Robert — dear Robert,” very 
quietly, and her hand touched him, passing like a breath 


134 


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of cool wind over his hair and neck. He kissed it humbly, 
pressing it to his wet, hot cheek. 

“I was frightened, Francey — and jealous — of every- 
thing — of the things you love that I don’t even know of — 
of the places you’ve been to — of your friends — ^your 
money — your work. I thought you’d run away to Italy 
— or somewhere else where I couldn’t foUow — that I’d 
lost you ” 

He saw her face and how deeply stirred she was. She 
had blazed up in answer to him, but that very fire lit up 
something in her which was not new, but which now stood 
out full armed — a clear-eyed austerity. 

‘‘I felt, too, as though I were running away — to the 
ends of the world — ^but not from you, Robert. I wanted 
you to come too. I asked you. You’re not frightened 
now, are you?” 

‘‘Not so much.” 

“Let’s be quiet — quite quiet, Robert. We’ve got to talk 
this out, haven’t we? I’ve got to understand. Sit here 
and help me tie these together. They’re for Christine. 
It’ll make it easier for us. You didn’t mean this to hap- 
pen. It was the sun and wind — it goes to one’s head like 
being out of prison after years and years. You mustn’t 
make a mistake. You would never forgive yourself or 
me. I’d understand if you said: ‘It was just to-day and 
being happy.’ But I won’t play at our being in love with 
one another, Robert.” 

“It isn’t a mistake. I’m not playing. I don’t pretend 
I meant to let you know. I was frightened. I wanted to 
hold fast to you. But I’ve been sure ever since that night 
at Brown’s ” 

“And yet you wanted to avoid me ” 

He nodded. He knelt beside her, very white and earn- 
est, with his hands clenched on his thighs. 

“That was because I knew. I didn’t think about it. 
But I knew all right. And I was afraid it would upset 
everything to care.” 

“Doesn’t it?” 


THE DARK HOUSE 


135 


“Not caring for you. Of course, I know all about 
life. I’m young and I’ve never looked at a girl. I’ve 
always realized that it would be natural to fall in love — 
perhaps worse than most men — and that if it was with a 
girl like Cosgrave’s it would be sheer damnation. I’d 
have to fight it down. But loving you is dilferent. It’ll 
make me stronger. I’ll work harder and better because 
I love you. I’ll do bigger things because of you.” 

Her head was bowed over her primroses. The sun- 
light falling between the trees on her wild brown hair 
kindled a smouldering colour in its disorder. He watched 
her, fascinated and abashed by the knowledge that she 
was smiling to herself. And suddenly, roughly like an 
ashamed boy, he took a grey and blood-stained rag from 
his inner pocket and tossed it into her lap. 

“Do you remember that.'^” 

She picked it up gingerly, amusedly. 

“Is it a handkerchief, Robert.'^” 

“Don’t you remember it.?” he repeated with triumph, 
as though in some way he had beaten her. 

For a moment she was silent. And when she looked 
at him her eyes were no longer smiling. 

“You kept it like that .?” 

“I wouldn’t even wash it. I hid it. It’s got dirtier 
and dirtier.” 

“It must be horribly germy, Robert. We’ll wash it 
together. As members of the medical profession we 
couldn’t have it on our conscience ” 

They laughed then, freely, out of the depth of their 
happiness. She laid her hand in his and he bent his 
head to kiss it. 

“You do trust me, Francey.?” 

“Trust you.?” 

“You don’t think it’s weak of me to love you.? You 
know I’ll pass my finals, don’t you — that I’ll be all right .? 
People might think I hadn’t the right to love you till I 
was sure. But, then, I am sure — dead sure.” 

“I’m sure, too.” Her voice sounded brooding, a little 


136 


THE DARK HOUSE 


husky. She took his hand and laid it on her lap, spread- 
ing out the fingers as though to examine each one in 
turn. “It’s a clever, beautiful hand, Robert — much the 
most beautiful part of you. It will do clever, wonderful 
things. What will you do.?” 

(As though, he thought, his hands were something apart 
and she was inquiring deeper into what was vitally him.) 

He told her. It reassured him to go back to his founda- 
tions and to find them still standing. He lost his tongue- 
tied clumsiness and spoke rapidly, clearly, with brief, 
strong gestures. His haggard youth gave place to a 
forcible, aggressive maturity. He was like an architect 
who had planned for every inch and stone of his master- 
piece. Next year he would pasa his finals. He would 
take posts as locum tenens whenever he could and keep 
his hospital connexions warm. In five years he would 
save enough to specialize — the throat gave wide opportu- 
nities for research. There were men already interested in 
him who would send him work. In ten years Harley 
Street — ^if not before. 

In the midst of it all he faltered and broke off to ask: 

“Why do you love me, Francey.?” 

And then, impulsively, she flung her arm about him and 
drew him close to her. His head was on her breast, and 
for one uncertain moment she was not Francey Wilmot 
at all, but the warm living spirit of the sunlight, of the 
quiet trees and the grass in which they lay — of aU the 
things of which he was afraid. 

“Because you’re such an odd, sad, little boy ” 

§3 

After tea it began to rain, not dismally, but in a gentle 
way as people cry who have been too happy. 

“In this jolly old country fine weather means bad 
weather,” Connie Edwards commented cynically. She had 
reason to be depressed. The impossible poppies dripped 
tears of blood over the brim of the cartwheel hat. But 


THE DARK HOUSE 


137 


apart from that misfortune she had never got over her 
original mood of puzzled dissatisfaction, and she and Cos- 
grave walked droopingly down the narrow lane arm in arm 
and almost wordless. 

So much of winter days was left that it was dark when 
they reached the foot of the hill — the eerie luminous dark- 
ness of the country when there is a moon riding some- 
where behind the clouds. Robert could see Christine and 
Francey just ahead of him. Christine had taken Fran- 
cey’s arm, and they talked together in undertones like 
people who have secret things to say to one another. How 
small Christine was! She seemed to have shrunk into a 
handful of a woman as though the sun had withered her. 
She walked timidly, with bowed head, feeling her way. 
Her voice lifted for a moment into the old clearness. 

“His father was a wonderful man — a wonderful, good 
man. Unhappy. Very unfortunate. Not meant for 
this world. His mother was my dear friend. If they had 

lived — ^those two I did what I could — I think they 

will be satisfied — it makes me happy ” 

She murmured wearily. And Francey bent her head to 
listen. Robert loved her for the tenderness of that 
gesture. Yet it was bitter, too, that they should talk of 
his father. He wanted to go up to them and tell the truth 
brutally to Christine’s face. He would have liked to have 
told them the one dream which he carried over from his 
sleep. But it would have been useless. Christine would 
only smile with a cruel, loving wisdom. 

“You don’t understand. You were only a child. Your 
father was so unhappy ” 

The myth had become an invulnerable reality and had 
grown golden in the twilight of her coming blindness. 
James Stonehouse had been a good man, a faithful friend, 
and broken-hearted husband. If those two had lived 
everything would have been different. She threw her 
hallowed picture of them on the screen of the dripping 
dusk so that they seemed to live. Robert saw them too. 
That was his mother walking at Christine’s side, and then 


138 


THE DARK HOUSE 


his father In a sort of shattering vision Robert saw 

him, a man of promise, black-browed with the riddle of his 
failure, a man of many hungers, seduced by rootless pas- 
sions, lured to miserable shipwreck because he could not 
keep to any course, because he could not give up worth- 
lessness for worth. 

Himself 

He staggered before the brief hallucination. The mois- 
ture broke out on his white face. It wasn’t enough to 
hate his father. He had to be fought down day by day. 
He was always there, waiting to pounce out. He lay on 
his face, pretending to be dead 

It was gone. He shook himself free as from the touch 
of an evil, insinuating hand out of the dark. This love 
was his strength. If Francey were like his mother, then 
she was also good. It was these rag and bobtail friends 
that poisoned everything. They would have to be shaken 
off. Francey was a child, fond of gaiety and pleasure, 
with no one to guide her. She didn’t understand. 

Howard and Gertie Sumners were walking behind him 
now with the luncheon-basket between them, talking earn- 
estly in muffled whispers that were too intimate, and behind 
them again came the Gang itself, laughing, jostling one 
another, exchanging facetiousness in their medical-Chelsea 
jargon. 

His father would have liked them. Connie Edwards, 
no doubt, would have been one of those dazzling, noisy 
phenomena that burst periodically on the Stonehouse 
horizon. 

Supposing he should come to like them too — to tolerate 
their ways, their loose living, loose thinking ? 

He remembered how that very afternoon he had tried 
to be one of them, and sickened before himself. 

Francey called to him through the darkness. 

“Miss Forsyth’s so tired, Robert. Couldn’t you carry 
her?” 

And he took Christine in his arms, whilst she laughed 


THE DARK HOUSE 


139 


and protested feebly. It was awful to feel how little she 
was. Her head rested against his shoulder. 

“It’s a longer road than I thought. You’re very 
strong, Robert. Your father was strong too.” 

It had been a successful day. And yet, as they sat 
packed close together in the dim, third-class carriage, 
they were like captives who had escaped and were being 
taken back into captivity. The sickly, overhead light fell 
on their tired faces, out of which the blood, called up by 
the sun and wind, had receded, leaving their city pallor. 
Connie Edwards had indeed produced a lip-stick from her 
gaudy bead bag, but after a fretful effort had flung it 
back. 

“What’s the good.? Who cares .?” 

And Cosgrave huddled closer to her, wan-eyed, hunted- 
looking. It was the ghost of that exam, that wouldn’t be 
laid — the prophetic vision of the row that waited for him, 
grinding its teeth. 

Only Gertie Sumners and Howard had a queer, remote 
i look, as though in that recent muffled exchange they had 
; reached some desperate resolve. 

The wet, gleaming platform slid away from them. 
There was a faint red light in the west where the sunset 
had been drowned. Christine turned her face towards 
it. She was like a little old child. Her little feet in the 
shabby, worn-out shoes scarcely touched the floor. Her 
drooping hat was askew — forgotten. 

“It has been a wonderful day. But I mustn’t come 
again. I’m too old. It’s silly to fall in love with life 
when one is old.” 

Robert leant across to her. He ached with his love and 
pity. 

“Tired, Christine.?” 

“A little. But it has been worth while. You carried 
me so nicely — so big and strong.” 

She leant against Erancey, nodding and smiling to re- 
assure him. And presently she was asleep. He saw how 


140 


THE DARK HOUSE 


Francey shifted her arm so that it encircled the bowed 
figure, and every ugly thing that had dogged him in that 
lonely, haunted walk vanished before the kind steadfastness 
of her eyes. 

It was as though she had said aloud: 

“We’ll take care of her together. We won’t let her 
die before we’ve made her very, very happy.” 

Then he took out a note-book and made a shaky sketch 
of a pompous, drunken-looking house with a huge door, 
on which were two brass plates, side by side, bearing the 
splendid inscriptions: 

Dr, Frances Stonehouse, Robert Stonehouse, 
M.D., F.R.C.S. 

Hours 10 — 1 

He showed it to her and they smiled at one another, 
and there was no one else in the carriage but themselves 
and their happiness. 


m 


§1 

TT meant a tightening* — a screwing up of his whole life. 

Time had to be found. The hours had to be packed 
closer to make room for her. He grasped after fresh 
opportunities to make money with a white-hot assiduity. 
He worked harder. For he was hag-ridden by his un- 
faithfulness. He drew up a remorseless programme of 
his days, and after that Francey might only walk home 
with lum from the hospital. And there was an hour on 
Sunday evening when he was too tired for anything else. 

It meant a ceaseless, active negation: a “No” to the 
simple wish to buy her a bunch of flowers, “No” to the 
longing to walk a little farther with her in the quiet dusk, 
“No” to the very thought of her. 

§2 

As usual, on the way home, they discussed their best 
“cases.” There was, No. 10 in A Ward, a raddled woman 
of the streets who had been brought in the night before 
as the result of a crime passiormel, and whose injuries had 
been the subject of long deliberations. Even before they 
had reached the hospital archway Robert and Francey 
agreed that Rogers’ air of mystery was simply a profes- 
sional disguise for complete bafflement. 

“It’s the sort of case I’d like to have,” Robert said. 
“Something you can get your teeth into and worry. I 
believe if I were on my own — given a free hand — I’d work 
it out — ^pull her through. Rogers may too. But just 
now he’s marking time. And there’s nothing to hope 

141 


142 


THE DARK HOUSE 


from time in a job like that. No constitution. Rotten 
all through. Still, it would be a feather in one’s cap.” 

He brooded fiercely, intently, like a hound on a hot 
scent. People turned to look at the big, shabby young 
man with the sunken, burning eyes that stared through 
them as though they had been so many shadows. He did 
not, in fact, see them at all. He made his way by sheer 
instinct across the crowded street. 

“She’s terribly afraid of death,” Francey said. “It’s 
awful to be so afraid. It must make life itself terrible.” 

“They’ll operate soon as they dare — an exploratory 
operation. If only I could have a say — a real say! It’s 
maddening to know so much — to be sure of oneself. I 
don’t believe Rogers would take me out on his private 
work if he knew I knew all I do. I’m glad we’re on a 
surgical post together, Francey. I don’t know what I’d 
do if I hadn’t got you to talk things over with.” 

“You daren’t talk of anything else,” she answered un- 
expectedly. “You’re frightened of our being happy 
together. You’re always trying to justify yourself.” 

“I’m not — what rubbish!” 

He tried to laugh at her. It was so like Francey to 
dash off down a side issue. And yet it was true. He 
did try to think as much as he could of that side of their 
common life. It did add an appearance of stability and 
reason to the splendid unreason of his loving her. It 
made up to him for those dismaying breaks when her 
face and body stood like a scorching pillar of fire between 
himself and his work, to find that when they were together 
they could be sternly practical, discuss their cases and 
criticize their superiors as though, beneath it all, there 
were not this golden, insurgent sea whose high tides 
swirled over his landmarks. Not destroying them. 

In those latter times he loved her humbly, with wonder 
and passionate self-abasement. But in their work they 
stood further away from one another. He could criticize 
her, and that gave him a heady sense of power and free- 
dom. He never forgot the year that she had deliberately 


THE DARK HOUSE 


143 


thrown away. And even now, when she stood' at the be- 
ginning of the road which he had already passed over, 
she seemed to him full of strange curiosities and wayward, 
purposeless interests. There were days when an ugly 
Chinese print, picked up in some back-street pawnshop, or 
the misfortunes of one of her raffish hangers-on, or some 
wild student rag, appeared to wipe out the vital business 
of life. She was known to be brilliant, but he distrusted 
her power of leaping to conclusions over the head of his 
own mathematical and exact reasoning. He distrusted 
still more her tendency to be right in the teeth of every 
sort of evidence to the contrary. It seemed that 
she took into her calculations factors that no one else 
found, significant, unprofessional straws in the wind, 
things she could not even explain. 

And yet she understood when he talked about his work, 
and that alone was like a gift to him. No one else under- 
stood — for that matter, no one else had had to listen. 
He knew that Christine was too tired, and poor overbur- 
dened Cosgrave would only have gazed helplessly at him, 
wondering why this strong, self-sufficient friend should 
pour out such unintelligible stuff over his own aching head. 
So he had learnt to be silent. Even now it was difficult to 
begin. He stammered and was shy and distrustful and 
eager, sometimes crudely self-confident, like a child who 
has played alone too long. 

And Francey listened, for the most part critical and 
dispassionate, but with sudden gestures of unmotivated 
tenderness: as when in the midst of his dissertation on a 
theory of insanity and crime she had kissed him. 

Sometimes for them both the prose and poetry of their 
relationship met and clasped hands. That was when they 
took their walk down Harley Street to have another look 
at the house which was one day to be adorned with the 
celebrated brass plates. At present it was solidly oc- 
cupied by several eminent-sounding medical gentlemen 
who would have to be ruthlessly dislodged when their time 
came. 


14.4 


THE DARK HOUSE 


For it was the best house in the street, and, of course, 
the Doctors Robert and Francey Stonehouse would have 
to have the best. 

And once they quarrelled about nothing at all, or about 
everything — they hardly knew. It was an absurd quarrel, 
which blazed up and went out again like fire in stubble. 
Perhaps they had waited too long for their allotted hour 
together — dreamed too much about it, so that when it 
came they could hardly bear it, and almost longed for it 
to be over. And in the midst of it Mr. Ricardo drifted in 
on one of his strange, distressful visits to Christine, and 
drove them out of doors to roam the drowsy Sunday 
streets, hand in hand, like any other pair of vulgar, home- 
less lovers. For Francey could not stay when Mr. Ric- 
ardo came. His hatred of her was a burning, poisonous 
sore that gave no peace to any of them. 

“It’s a sort of jealousy,” Robert reflected. “We three 
have always held together. He’s had no one else to care 
about. And now you’ve come, and he thinks you want to 
take me away from him.” 

“I do,” Francey said unexpectedly. 

“Not in the way he means.” 

“You don’t know ” 

“He’s been good to me. I’d never have got through 
without him. I can’t have him hurt. And you will fight 
him, Francey. I know he’s crabbed and bitter, but so 
would you be if you’d been twisted out of shape all your 
life. And you only do it for the fun of the thing. Funda- 
mentally, you think alike.” 

“We don’t, that’s 'j^t it. I’m sorry for him, and if 
it had been anything less vital I’d compromise — he’d 
compromise, too, perhaps. We’d both lie low and look 
pleasant about our differences. But as it is we can’t help 
ourselves. We’ve got to stand up and fight ” 

“I say, that sounds jolly dramatic.” 

“It is rather.” 

“Next thing you’ll be saying you believe in God.” 

“Well, I do ” 


THE DARK HOUSE 


14,5 


H0 stopped short and let go her hand. He was physi- 
cally ashamed and uncomfortable. He tried to laugh, 
but for the moment they were face to face, and he could 
not mistake her seriousness. They were like strangers, 
peering at each other through the grey dusk. 

“Look here, Francey, dearest, you don’t expect me to 
believe that.? You’re just joking, aren’t you.? You’re 
— you’re a modem woman, with a scientific training, too. 
You can’t believe in an old, wom-out myth.” 

“I didn’t say that.” 

“ ‘An untested hypothesis,’ ” he quoted teasingly, but 
with a stirring anger. 

“I don’t know about that, either. We’re both bound 
by our profession to admit an empirical test. And if 
we human beings can’t survive without God ” 

“But we can — we do.” 

“I can’t.” 

He threw up his head. 

“Why do women always become personal when they 
argue.?” 

“And why do rationalists always become irrational.?” 

They walked on slowly, apart, vaguely afraid. He 
wanted to change the subject, to take her by the arm and 
hold her fast. For she was drifting away from him. Her 
voice sounded remote and troubling, like a little old tune 
that he could not quite remember. Its emotion fretted 
his overstrained nerves. He wanted to close his ears 
against it. It was a trivial tune which might become a 
torment. 

“It’s not only me. It’s everyone. Most of us are 
frightfully unhappy. Don’t you realize that.? And the 
more we understand life the more desperate we get. Sav- 
ages and children may do without a god, but we can’t. 
We know too much. Even the stupidest — the most care- 
less of us. Think of Howard and Gertie and all that lot. 
Every second word is ‘What’s the good.? What’s it all 
about?’ They make a great deal of noise to cover up 


14.6 


THE DARK HOUSE 


their unhappiness. They’re terrified of loneliness and 
silence. And one day it’ll have to be faced.” 

“Oh, if you’re going to take Howard as an example — ” 
he interrupted. 

“ — and Rufus Cosgrave,” she added. 

He laughed with a boyish malice. 

“Cosgrave doesn’t need a god. He’s got me. I’ll look 
after him.” 

“You think you can.?^ And then we ourselves. We’re 
different, aren’t we.?* We’ve got our work. We’re going 
to do big things. For whom.?* — for what.?* For our fel- 
low-creatures.?* But if we don’t care for our fellow-crea- 
tures.?* And we don’t, do we.?* Not naturally. The 
Brotherhood of Man is just dangerous nonsense. Natu- 
rally men loathe one another in the mass. How can we 
pretend to love some of those people we see every day in 
the wards with their terrible faces — their terrible minds.?* 
But the idea of God does somehow translate them — it gets 
underneath the ugliness — they do become in some mystic 
way my brothers and my sisters.” 

He found it strangely difficult to answer calmly. It 
would have been easier to have bludgeoned her into silence 
by a shouted “It’s all snivelling, wretched rot !” like an 
angry schoolboy. He did not know why he was so angry. 
Perhaps Ricardo was right. It was something vital. He 
could feel the old man’s shadow at his side, his hand pluck- 
ing his sleeve, urging him on, claiming his loyalty. They 
were allies fighting together against a poisonous miasma 
that sapped men’s brains — their intellectual integrity. 

“Piling one fallacy on another isn’t argument, Francey. 
We don’t need to like our fellow-creatures. It’s a mis- 
take to care. Emotion upsets one’s judgment. Scien- 
tists — the best men in the profession — try to eliminate 
personal feeling altogether. They’re out for knowledge 
for its own sake. That’s good enough for them.” 

“And the end of that — organized, scientific beastliness, 
like modern war. Knowledge perverted to every sort of 
deviltry. Huge swollen heads and miserable withered 


THE DARK HOUSE 


147 


hearts. One of these days we’ll blow ourselves to 
pieces 

They were both breathless and more than a little in- 
coherent. They had entered into a playful tussle, and 
now they were fighting one another with set teeth. 

“I don’t believe you believe a word you’re saying,” he 
stammered. “You know as well as I do that it’s only 
since we began to throw off superstition that we’ve begun 
to move. Or perhaps you don’t want to move — don’t be- 
lieve in progress.” 

“Progress towards what.?”’ she flung back impetu- 
ously. “Perfection? Some point where we’d have no 
poverty, no war, no ignorance, no death even ; where we’d 
all have every mortal thing we want? The millennium? 
That’s only another word for Hell. It’s only by pre- 
tending that there are things we want, and that we should 
be happy if we had them, that we can believe in happiness 
at all. All this unrest, this sick despair every morning 
of our lives when we drag ourselves out of bed and wonder 
why we bother — it’s just because we’ve begun to suspect 
that the millennium is of no use to us. We’ve got to have 
more than that — some sort of spiritual background — or 
cut our throats.” 

“Wild rhapsodizing, Francey. You don’t know a 
thing.” 

“I don’t. Nor do you. When I said I believed, I meant 
I hoped — I trusted. And if there isn’t a God at the end 
of it all, you people who want to keep us alive for the 
sake of the knowledge you get out of us will have to make 
one up.” 

Whereat, suddenly, in a cool, refreshing gust, their 
sense of humour returned and blew them close to one 
another. They laughed and took hands again — a little 
shyly, like lovers who had been parted for a long time. 

“What rot — our quarrelling over nothing at all,” Rob- 
ert said, “when we’ve only got this hour together. I 
wanted to say ‘I love you, Francey — I love you, dear’ 
©“^er and over again. Say T love you too, Robert.’ ” 


148 


THE DARK HOUSE 


“I love you too,” she answered soberly. 

But the crack was there — a mere fissure in the ground 
between them — a place to be avoided even in their 
thoughts. 

§3 

At night when his work was over and the unrest grew 
too strong to be fought, he crept down the black, creak- 
ing stairs, through the sleeping backwater of Drayton 
Mews, and out into the streets. He walked fast, with 
his head down, guiltily, like a man fiying from a crime. 
But in the grave square where Francey Wilmot lived he 
slackened speed, and, under the thick mantle of the trees, 
stood so still that he was only a deeper shadow. Then 
release came. It was like gentle summer rain falling on 
his fever. There was no one to see his weakness. He could 
think and feel simply and naturally as a lover, without 
remorse. Sometimes a light burnt in her window, and 
then he knew that she was working, making up for those 
queer, wild play-hours. He could imagine her under the 
shaded lamplight, the books heaped round her, and her 
hands clenched hard in the thick brown hair. He could 
feel the peace, the rich, deep stillness round her. And a 
loving tenderness, exquisite and delicate as a dream, 
welled up in him. He said things out of his heart to her 
that he had never said: broken, stumbling things, melted 
in the white-heat of their truth into a kind of poetry of 
which the burden never changed. “I can’t live without 
you — I can’t live without you.” He could have knelt 
before her, burying his burning face in her lap in strange 
humility — childlike surrender. 

And when the window was dark he knew that she had 
gone out to dance, to the theatre, with friends whom he 
did not know, belonging to that other life in which he had 
no part. And then his loneliness was like a black sea. 
He leant against the railings, weak with weariness and 
hunger, fighting his boy’s tears, until she came. He did 
not speak to her. She never knew that he was there. He 


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149 


hid, his heart stifling him, until the door closed on her. 
Then, since she had come back to him, belonged to him 
again, he could go in peace. 

The others — Howard and Gertie and even Connie now 
— went in and out, risking ruthless ejection if she were 
hard pressed, to sit in the best chairs, with their feet in 
the fender and drink coffee and smoke endlessly whilst 
they poured their good-natured cynicism over life. If 
they were hungry they rifled Francey’s larder, and if they 
were hard up they borrowed her money. But after the 
one time Robert never went. He did not want to meet 
them. And besides the big square room with its mark of 
other stately days — its panelled walls, rich ceilings and 
noble doors — was his enemy. It was steeped in a mellow, 
unconscious luxury that threatened him. There were 
relics from Francey’s old home, trophies from her Italian 
wanderings, books that his hands itched just to touch, 
and things of strange troubling beauty. A bronze statue 
of a naked faun stood in the comer where the light fell 
upon it, and seemed to gather into itself everything that 
he feared — a joyous dancing to some far-off music. 

The room would not let him forget that Francey held 
money, which he had had to squeeze his life dry to get, 
lightly and indifferently. She gave it with both hands. 
She had always had enough, and it seemed to her a little 
thing. Between people who cared for one another it 
counted less than a word, and his sullen refusal of every 
trivial pleasure and relief that lay in her power to give 
them hurt and puzzled her. She saw in it only a bitter 
pride. 

‘‘You might at least let me make Christine’s life easier 
in little things,” she said. 

He could not tell her that Christine would have been 
afraid for him, as he was afraid of the deep chairs that had 
seemed to clasp his tired body in drowsy arms, of the 
rugs that drank up every harsh sound, of the warm, fra- 
grant atmosphere that was like a blow in the face of their 
chill and barren poverty. 


150 


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So after that one time he kept away. But he could 
always see the room and Francey working there, and the 
slender, joyful body of the faun poised on the verge of 
its mystic dance. 

Once, Francey was too strong for him, and they bought 
tickets for the theatre, and he sat hunched beside her in 
the front row of the cheap seats and stared down at the 
great square of light like an outcast gazing at the golden 
gates of Paradise. It was The Tempest, and he hardly 
understood. It broke over him in overpowering sound 
and colour. He was dazed and blinded. He forgot 
Francey. He sat with his gaunt white face between his 
hands and watched them pass: Prospero, Miranda, Ferdi- 
nand, Ariel — figures of a noble, glittering company — and 
wretched, uncouth Caliban crouched on the outskirts of 
their lives, pining for his lost kingdom. But in the in- 
terval he was silent, awkward and heavy with an emotion 
that could not find an outlet. He felt her hand close over 
his — an, almost anxious hand. 

“Robert, you like it, don’t you.^ You’re not bored.?” 

He turned to look dazedly at her, stammering in his 
confusion. 

“I’ve never been to a theatre before.” 

“Never.? Oh, my dear ” 

“Only to a circus, long ago.” He drew back hastily 
into himself. He did not want her to be sorry like that. 
He would not let her see how shaken he was. “I never 
wanted to go,” he said. 

After that they walked home together, and in the empty 
street that led into her square a moonlight spirit of 
phantasy seemed to possess her, and she sang under her 
breath and danced in front of him, rather solemnly as she 
had done as a little girl : 

“Come unto these yellow sands 
And then take hands ...” 

He caught hold of her. Everything was unreal — they 
themselves and the unfamiliar street, painted with silver 
and black shadows. 


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151 


‘‘Don’t — you’re dancing away from me; there’s noth- 
ing for you to dance to.” 

She smiled back wistfully. 

“ * The isle is full of noises, 

Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not. 

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments 

Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices . . 

“I don’t hear them,” he muttered clumsily. 

“Caliban heard them ” 

“And you’re Ariel,” he said, with sudden, sorrowful 
understanding. “Ariel !” 

From the steps of the dark house she looked down at 
him, her eager face smiling palely in the white, still light. 

“Ariel wasn’t a woman, dear duffer. You’ll have to 
read it. I’ll lend it to you. And then we’ll go again.” 

He shook his head. 

“No.” 

“Yes — often — often, Robert. We’ve been nearer to one 
another than ever before — just these last minutes — quite, 
quite close. We’ve got to find each other in pleasure 
too.” 

He rallied all his strength. He said stiffly, pompously : 

“It’s been awfully nice, of course. And thank you for 
taking me. But I don’t really care for that sort of 
thing.” 

And for a moment they remained facing one another 
whilst the joy died out of her eyes, leaving a queer dis- 
tress. Then they shook hands and he left her, coldly, 
prosaically, as though nothing had happened. But he was 
like a drunken man who had fallen into a sea of glory. 

‘‘The clouds, methought, would open, and show riches 
Ready to drop upon me . . . ” 

There was all that work that he had meant to do before 
morning. It seemed far off — more unreal and fantastic 


162 


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than a fairy tale. His heart and brain ached with un- 
willingness and loathing. 

“ . . . that, when I wak’d, 

I cried to dream, again ...” 

He set his teeth. He clenched his hands till they hurt 
him. 

“I’ll have to keep away from all that,” he thought 
aloud, “altogether — till I don’t care any more.”^ 


IV 


§1 

A FTER all, Rufus Cosgrave had imagined his answers. 

Connie Edwards met Robert as he came out of the 
hospital gates and told him. It was raining dismally, 
with an ill-tempered wind blustering down the crowded 
street, and she had not dressed for bad weather. Perhaps 
she did not admit unpleasant possibilities even into her 
wardrobe. Perhaps she could not afford to do so. Her 
thin, paper-soled shoes, with the Louis XIV. heels, and 
the cheap silk stockings which showed up to her knees, 
made her look like some bedraggled, long-legged bird-of- 
Paradise. A gaudy parasol could not protect her flop- 
ping hat, or her complexion, which had both suffered. 
Or she had been crying. But she did not sound as though 
she had been crying. She sounded breathless and 
resentful. 

“He heard this afternoon,’^ she said. “And what 
must he do but come bursting round to my place — half an 
hour before Pm due to start for the show — and carry on 
like a madman. Scared stiff, I was. Tried to make me 
swear I’d marry him and start for Timbuctoo to-morrow, 
and when I wouldn’t, wanted to shoot himself and me too — 
as though Fd made a muck of things. Well, I’d done my 
best, and when it came to that sort of sob-stuff I’d had 
enough. WhaPs he take me for.? Get me into trouble 
with my landlady — making a row like that.” 

Robert heard her out in silence, and his intent, ex- 
pressionless scrutiny seemed to flick her on the raw. She 
stamped her foot at him. “Oh, for the Lord’s sake, get 
a move on — do something, can’t you.? I didn’t come here 
to be stared at as though I were a disease!” 

“Where is he.?” 


153 


164 


THE DARK HOUSE 


“If I knew ! My place probably — with the gas 

full on — committing suicide — making a rotten scandal. 
You’ve got to come and dig him out.” 

“Where do you live.?” 

“Ten minutes from here. lOE Stanton Place. I’ll 
show you a short way. I ran like a hare, hoping I’d catch 
you, and you’d put a bit of sense into the poor looney’s 
head. Serves me right — taking on with his sort.” 

“Well — ^we’d better hurry,” Robert said. 

“Thanks. I said I’d show you the way. I’m not com- 
ing in. Don’t you believe it. I’ve had enough. All I 
ask is — get him out and keep him out.” 

“You’re through with him.?” 

Her habitual good-natured gaiety was gone. She 
looked disrupted and savagely afraid, like an animal that 
has escaped capture by a frantic effort. And yet it was 
difficult to imagine Rufus Cosgrave capturing or fright- 
ening anyone. 

“You bet I’m through with him. You tell him so — 
tell him I don’t want to see him again — I won’t be 

bothered ” She broke off, and added, with a kind 

of rough relenting: “Put it any blessed way you like — 
say what’s true — ^we’ve had our good times together — 
and it seems they’re over — we’ve no use for one another.” 

“You mean — now he’s failed.” 

“What do you mean — ‘now he’s failed’.? What’s his 
rotten old exam, got to do with me.? I don’t even know 
what it’s about.” 

“You took the good time whilst you could get it, and 
now when you can’t hope for anything more ” 

She stopped short, and they faced each other with an 
antagonism that neither gave nor asked for quarter. 
They had always been enemies, and now that the gloves 
were off they were almost glad. 

“So that’s my line. Cradle-snatching. Vamping the 
helpless infant!” She burst into a fit of angry, ugly 
laughter. “A good time! Running round with a poor 
kid with ten shillings a week pocket-money — eating in 


THE DARK HOUSE 


155 


beastly cheap restaurants — riding on the tops of ’buses 
when some girls I know are feeding at the Ritz and rolling 
round in limousines. That’s what I get for being soft. 
And now because I won’t shoot myself, or go off to no- 
where steerage, I’m a bad, abandoned woman. What 
d’you take me for?” 

“What you are,” he said. 

She went dead white under her streaky paint. 

“You — you’ve got no right to say that. You’re a 
devil — a stuck-up devil — I hate you — I’d have always 
hated you if I’d bothered to mind. I — I gave Mm a good 
time. That’s the truth. He was down and out when I 
met him, and I set him on his feet. I didn’t mind what I 
missed — or the other girls guying me — I made him laugh 
and believe he had as good a chance in the world as any- 
one else. I put a bit of fun into him. I liked the kid. 
I — I like himi now. If he wanted a good time to-morrow 
I’d run round with him again. But I’m no movie heroine 
— I’m not out for poison and funerals and slow music. 
Life’s too damn serious for my sort to make a wail and a 
moan about it.” 

He stood close to her. He almost menaced her. He 
did in fact look dangerous enough with his white, set face 
and unflinching eyes in which stood two points of metallic 
light. If he had seen himself then he might have cowered 
away as from a ghost. 

“I don’t care a rap about you. I do care about my 
friend. You’ve got to stand by Cosgrave till he’s over 
the worst.” 

“I won’t — I won’t !” 


“I’ll make you. You took him up. You made him think 
you cared about him. You’re responsible ” 

“I’m not — I won’t be responsible ; it’s not my line. I’ve 
got myself to look after.” 

She had the look of someone struggling against an in- 
visible entanglement — a pitiable, rather horrible look of 
naked purpose. She meant to cut free at whatever cost. 

“You little beast!” he said. 


156 


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He was sick with contempt. He swung away from her, 
and she stood in the middle of the pavement and called 
names after him like a drunken, furious street-girl. She 
did not seem to be even aware of the people who stared 
at her. When he was almost out of hearing, she added: 
“Give him my love !” shrilly, vindictively, as though it had 
been a final insult. But he took no notice and now, at 
any rate, she was crying bitterly enough. 

§2 

proved to be the top room of No. 10, a dingy j 
lodging-house whose front door, in accordance with the ! 
uncertain habits of its patrons, stood open from year’s i 
end to year’s end. Robert went in unnoticed. He ran 
up the steep, narrow stairs, with their tattered carpeting, i 
two steps at a time. A queer elation surged beneath his s 
anger and distress. Cosgrave’s failure was like a personal ! 
challenge — a defiance thrown in his teeth. The old fight 
was on again. It was against odds. But then, he had 
always fought against odds — ^won against them. 

The room was Connie Edwards herself. It seemed 
to rush out at him in a tearing rage, flaunting its vulgar i 
finery and its odour of bad scent and cheap cigarette j 
smoke. It made him sick, and he brushed it out of his 
consciousness. He did not see the poor attempts to make 
it decent and attractive — the bed disguised beneath a ! 
faded Liberty cretonne, a sentimental Christ hanging i 
between a galaxy of matinee heroes, nor a full-length 
woman’s portrait, across which was scrawled “Gyp La- i 
belle” in letters large enough to conceal half of her out- i 
rageous nakedness. There were even a few flowers, droop- ; 
ing forlornly out of a dusty vase, and a collection of 
theatrical posters, to lend a touch of serious pro- I 
fessionalism. 

But the end of it all was a frowzy, hopelesss disorder. 

Cosgrave lay huddled over the littered table by the 
open window. The red untidy head made a patch of 


THE DARK HOUSE 


167 


grotesque colour in the general murk. He looked like a 
poor rag doll that had been tom and battered in some 
wild carnival scrimmage and flung aside. 

There was not much in him — not much fight, as he 
himself said. Not the sort to survive. Life was too 
strong — too difiicult for him. He bungled everything — 
even an exam. It would be wiser, more consistent to let 
him drift. And yet at sight of that futile breakdown, 
it was not impatience or contempt that Robert felt, but 
a choking tenderness — sl fierce pity. He had to protect 
him — pull him through. He had promised so much — 
he forgot when: that afternoon lying in the long, sooty 
grass behind the biscuit factory, or that night when he 
had dragged Cosgrave breathless and staggering in pur- 
suit of the Greatest Show in Europe. It did not matter. 
It had become part of himself. And Cosgrave had always 
trusted him — believed in him. 

“It’s all right, old man; it’s only me — Robert.” For 
Cosgrave had leapt up with an eager cry, and now stood 
staring at him open-mouthed. The light was behind him, 
and the open mouth and blank, shadowy face made a 
queer, ghastly effect, as though a drowned man had 
suddenly stood up. Then he sagged pitifully, and 
Robert caught him by the shoulders and shook him with 
a rough, boyish impatience. “Don’t be an idiot. It 
doesn’t matter all that much. Exams are not everything. 
Everyone knows that. We’ll find something else. If your 
people are too beastly, you’ll come and share with us. 
I’ll see you through — it’ll be all right.” 

But a baffling change came over Cosgrave. He shook 
himself free. He stood upright, looking at Robert with 
a kind of stony dignity. 

“Where is she.?” 

“Who?” 

“Connie. She sent you, didn’t she?” 

“Yes. We met ” 

“Where is she?” 


158 


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“I don’t know. Gone to the theatre probably.” | 

“Isn’t she coming back.?” ' 

“Not now.” 

“Didn’t she send a message?” 

“She said — ^it was finish between you. She’s a little i 
rotter, Cosgrave.” 

“She made me laugh,” Cosgrave said simply. “I don’t 
mind about the exam. — or about anything now. I sup- i 
pose I was bound to fail. But I was so jolly happy. I’d | 
never had a good time like that. It’s all over now. She i 
doesn’t care. She said she couldn’t be tied up with a lot [ 
of trouble. That’s what I am. A lot of trouble. It was 
all bunkum — make-believe — to think I could be anything 
else.” 

So it wasn’t his failure. It wasn’t even the loss of a ; 
good-for-nothing chorus-girl. It was a loss far more ^ 
subtle. The recognition of it lamed Robert Stonehouse, 
knocked the power out of him, as though someone had 
struck and paralysed a vital nerve centre. He could only 
stammer futilely: 

“She’s not worth bothering about.” 

Cosgrave slumped back into his chair. His hands lay 
on the table, half clenched as though they had let go 
and didn’t care any more. He looked at Robert wide-eyed 
with a sudden absolute knowledge. 

“That’s it,” he said. “Not worth bothering about — 
nothing in this whole beastly, rotten world ” 

§3 

A convenient uncle found him a berth as clerk to a 
trading firm in West Africa, and with a cheap Colonial 
outfit and £10 in his pocket, Cosgrave set out for the 
particular swamp which was to be the scene of his future 
career. He went docilely, with limp handshakes and dull, 
pathetic eyes. If he betrayed any feeling at all, it was a 
sort of relief at getting away from everybody. But 
emotionally he was dead — ^like cheap champagne gone 


THE DARK HOUSE 159 

flat, as he expressed it in one twisted mood of self- 
revelation. 

Probably he was thinking of Connie Edwards and of 
their last spree together. 

But he never spoke of her. 

And it was very unlikely that the swamp would give 
him a chance to see any of them again. 

After all, he had stood for something. He was a 
rudderless little craft that had come leaking and tumbling 
willy-nilly in the wake of the bigger vessel. But also he 
had been a sort of talisman. He had protected Robert 
as the weak, when they are humble and loving, can pro- 
tect the strong, giving them greater confidence, making 
their defeat impossible. With his going went security. 
Little old fears came crawling out of their hiding-places. 
At night when Robert climbed the dark stairs to their 
stable-attic, they set upon him. They clawed his heart. 
He called to Christine before he saw her, and the answer- 
ing silence made him sick with panic. It was reasonless 
panic, for Christine often fell asleep at dusk. She was 
difficult to wake and when she woke it was strangely, with 
a look of bewilderment, like a traveller who has come 
home after a long absence. Once she had spoken his 
father’s name with a ringing joy, and he had answered 
roughly and had seen her shrink back into herself. Her 
little hands trembled, fumbling apologetically with the 
shabby bag she always carried. She was like a girl who, 
in one withering tragic moment, had become old. But 
his aching love found no outlet, no word of regret or 
tenderness. It recoiled back on himself in a dead weight 
of pain. 

He began to watch himself like a sick man. There were 
hours when he knew his brain to be losing edge — ^black 
periods of hideous impotency which, when they passed, left 
him shaken and wet with terror. Supposing, at the end 
of everything, he failed.^ He didn’t care so much. His 
very power of caring had been dissipated. His single 
purpose lost itself amidst incompatible dreams. He was 


160 


THE DARK HOUSE 


being torn asunder — and there was a limit to en- 
durance. 

Cosgrave had failed. He couldn’t concentrate. He 
was always looking for happiness. He had fallen in love 
and wasted himself and made a mess of his life. 

It was mad to fall in love. 

And yet the worst dread of all was the dread of losing 
Francey. It seemed even the most unreasonable, for they 
had their work in common and they loved one another. 
There was no doubting their love. They were very young 
and might have to wait, but he could trust her to wait all 
her life. He knew dimly that she had been fond of him 
as a little boy, and had gone on being fond of him, simply 
and unconsciously, because it was not possible for her to 
forget. She would love him in the same way. That 
steadfastness was like a light shining through the mists 
of her character — through her sudden fancies, her 
shadowy withdrawals. 

And still he was afraid, and sometimes he suspected 
that she was afraid too. It was as though inexorable 
forces were rising up in both of them, essentially of them, 
and yet outside their control, two dark antagonisms wait- 
ing sorrowfully to join issue. 

§4 

It had happened suddenly — not without warning. One 
little event trod on the heels of another, rubble skirling 
down the mountain-side, growing to an avalanche. 

Or, again, Cosgrave might have been the odd, unlikely 
keystone of their daily life. He had not seemed to matter 
much, but now that he had been torn out the bridge 
between them crumbled. 

It had been a day full of bitterness — of set-backs, which 
to Robert Stonehouse were like pointing fingers. They 
were the outward expressions of his disorder. He did not 
believe in luck, but in a man’s strength or weakness, and 
he knew by the things that happened to him that he was 


THE DARK HOUSE 


161 


weakening*. A private operation had gone badly. He had 
bungled with his dressings, so that the surgeon had turned 
on him in a burst of irritation. 

“Better go home and sleep it off, Stonehouse.” 

He had not gone. He would not admit that he was ill — 
dared not. All illness now meant the end of everything. 
It would wipe out all that they had endured if he were to 
break down now. It would kill Christine. She must not 
even guess. 

He hung about the hospital common-room. The sum- 
mer heat surging up from the burning pavements stag- 
nated between the faded walls. He could not touch the 
food that he had brought with him. He was faint and 
sick, and the long table at which he sat, with its white blur 
of newspapers, rose and fell as though it were floating on 
an oily sea. But he held out. At five o’clock he was to 
meet Francey at the gates, and, as though she had some 
magic gift of relief, he strained towards that time, his 
head between his hands, his ears counting the seconds that 
dripped heavily, drowsily from the moon-faced clock. 

And then she did not come. Outwardly it was only one 
more trifle, capable of simple explanations. But he saw 
it through a disfiguring haze of fever, and it was deadly 
in its significance. He hardly waited. He crossed the 
thoroughfare, and once in a side street stumbled into a 
shambling run. He did not stop until he reached her 
house. His former reluctance broke before the imperative 
need to see her and make sure of her. He stormed the 
broad, deep, carpeted stairs, pursued by a senseless panic. 
But at the top his strength failed him. He felt his brain 
throbbing in torture against his skull. 

The old maid-servant nodded gravely, sympathetically. 

“Yes, she’s in, sir, but very busy — going away — sir.” 

Going away. He wavered in the dim hall, trying to 
control his fl3dng thoughts. Going away. And she had 
said nothing the night before — had not even warned him. 
Some unexpected, untoward event striking in the dark. 
Illness. A long separation. (And yet, he argued, he 


162 


THE DARK HOUSE 


could not live without her. She had no people who could 
claim her. They were dead. No one to come between 
them. And there was her work. She would never leave 
that again.) 

But there she stood in the midst of the disorder of a 
sudden going. Open suit-cases, clothes strewn about the 
floor, she herself in some loose, bright-coloured wrap, her 
brown hair tousled and her brows knit in perplexity. She 
stopped short at sight of him, smiling ruefully, her arms 
fuU. 

‘‘Oh, my dear — I’d forgotten.” (Then she must have 
seen his face with its dead whiteness, for she added quickly, 
half laughing) : “Not you. Only the time. I’ve not been 
at the hospital, and I thought I had still half an hour. 
I’ve had to run round like mad, and even now I’ve got a 
hundred things to do ” 

He gulped. He said: “Where are you going.?^” in a 
flat, emotionless voice, as though he did not care. 

For a moment she did not answer. She let the clothes 
drop, forgotten, on the sofa. He could see her weighing — 
considering what she should say to him. 

“Italy — Rome — I expect ” 

“Italy — when 

“I’ve got to be at the hospital to-morrow. Wednesday 
probably. I don’t believe it’ll be for long. I hope not. 
A week or two. I’ve got leave for a month.” 

“Why are you going 

And now he could not keep the harsh break out of his 
voice. He could not hide the physical weakness which 
made it impossible for him to stand. And yet, though she 
looked at him, she seemed unaware that he was suffering. 
She was absorbed in some difficulty of her own, set on her 
own immediate purpose. He knew that mood. It was the 
other side of her fitful, whimsical way of life that she 
could be as relentless, as deadly resolute and patient in 
attainment as himself. 

“It’s about Howard,” she said, abruptly coming to a 
decision. “I wasn’t sure at first what to do about it. I 


THE DARK HOUSE 


163 


(didn’t want anyone to know. But you’re different. We 
have to share things. Howard and Gertie — they’ve both 
gone — gone off — no one knows where.” 

“Together.?” 

“I’m pretty certain of it. At any rate, Gertie, who 
couldn’t even pay her rent, has vanished, and Howard — 
I heard about Howard this morning.” 

“What did you hear about him.?” 

“It was from Salter. You probably don’t know him. 
He came to me because he knew I was a friend of 
Howard’s. He was frightfully upset. It seems there was 
some sort of club which a crowd of students were collecting 
for, and he and Howard held the funds. It wasn’t much 
— £150 — and Howard drew it out two days ago.” 

“Does that astonish you.?” Robert asked. 

She seemed not to hear the scorn and irony of the 
question. She went on packing deliberately, and he 
watched her, not knowing what he would say or do. The 
tide was rising faster. His dread would carry him off 
his feet. 

“No. I was sure things were coming to a crisis.” 

“He was no good. Anyone could see that.” 

“I didn’t see it.” 

“Well, you see it now,” he flung at her with a hard 
triumph. 

“I don’t.” 

“A mean thief ” 

“Not mean, Robert.” 

“I don’t know anything meaner than stealing money 
from a lot of hard-up students.” 

“There was Gertie,” she said as though that were some 
sort of extenuation. 

“Gertie — they’ve gone off on some rotten spree — not 
even married.” 

(He hated himself — the beastly righteousness of his 
voice, his contemptible exultation. It was as though he 
were under some horrid spell which twisted his love and 
anguish into the expressions of a spiteful prig. Why 


164 


THE DARK HOUSE 


couldn’t he tell her of those deadly, shapeless fears, of 
his loneliness, his sorrowful jealousies? He was shut up 
in the iron fastness of his own will — gagged and helpless.) 

He saw her start. She stopped definitely in her work 
as though she were at last aware of some struggle between 
them. The room was growing dark, and she came a little 
nearer, trying to see his face. 

“I don’t suppose so. I don’t think it would occur to 
them.” 

“No — that’s what I should imagine.” 

“You’re awfully hard on people, Robert.” 

“That sort of thing makes me sick. It ought to make 
you sick. I don’t know why it doesn’t. You don’t seem 
to care — to have any standards. You’re unmoral in your 
outlook — perhaps you’re too young — you don’t realize. 
A rotter like Howard who takes other people’s money just 
to enjoy himself — a girl like Gertie Sumners who goes off 
with the first man who asks her ” 

“You don’t understand, Robert.” 

“No,” he said with a laugh, “I don’t.” 

“Gertie Sumners hasn’t long to live. I sent her to the 
hospital last week, and they told her honestly. And she 
wanted so much to see Italy. I don’t think Howard cares 
for her or she for him, except in a comradely sort of way. 
They loved the same things — and he was sorry — he wanted 
to give her her one good time.” 

“He told you all that, I suppose?” 

“No,” she answered soberly. “But I know.” 

He waited a moment. He was trying desperately to 
hold back — to stop himself. He was sorry about Gertie 
Sumners. But everything was against him. The room 
was against him — the faun dancing noiselessly among the 
shadows, the little things that Francey had gathered 
about her, the dear personal things that can become ter- 
rible in their poignancy, Francey herself, standing there 
slender and grave-eyed, judging him, weighing him. They 
were all leagued together. They spoke with one voice. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


165 


“We belong xo one another. We understand. But you 
don’t belong. You are outside.” 

“I don’t see, at any rate,” he said, “what it has got to 
do with you — or why you should be going away.” 

“I’m going after them. There’s no one else. Howard 
will expect prosecution. He will think that he’ll never be 
able to come home. He’s pretty reckless, but they will be 
thinking of that all the time. It wiU spoil everything for 
them.” 

“And what can you do.?^” 

“I can tell them it’s all right.” 

“How can it be.^*” 

“It is,” she said curtly. “The money has been paid 
back.” 

“Paid back!” Understanding burst upon him. “Foii 
paid it.?” 

He stood up. He knew that resentment flickered in her 
— a fine, dangerous resentment against him because he 
had dragged so simple and obvious a thing out of its in- 
significance. But his own anger was like a mad, runaway 
horse, rushing him to destruction, 

“It was stupid of him not to have come to me in the 
first place,” she said, with an effort. “He should have 
known ” 

He broke in fiercely. 

“You can’t — can’t go like that.” 

“I must. If they had left an address — ^but, of course, 
they haven’t. I’ll have to track them down. It won’t be 
so difficult.” A spark of gaiety lit up her serious eyes. 
“I’ll find Gertie lying on her back in the Sistine Chapel. 
She’U scorn the mirrors.” 

“You can’t leave your work like that.” 

“The hospital people have been awfully decent about 
it.” 

“You told them .?” 

“I told them I had urgent, personal business.” 

“You told them a lie, then.?” 


166 


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( Steady. Steady. But it was too late. His only hope 
lay in her understanding — her pity.) 

“It wasn’t a lie. My friends are my business.” 

“Your friends !” he echoed. 

There was silence between them. She was controlled 
enough not to answer. It would have been better if she 
had returned taunt for taunt so that at last in the white 
heat of conflict his prison might have melted and let 
him free. But there followed a cold, deadly interlude, in 
which their antagonism hardened itself with reason and 
bitterness. He went and stood by the window looking 
out on to the dim square. He said at last roughly, 
authoritatively : 

“Don’t go. I don’t want you to go.” 

(If only he could have gone on — driven the words ever 
his set lips — “because I’m afraid — because I’m at break- 
ing-point — ^because I can’t do without you. I’m fright- 
ened of life. I’ve been starved in body and heart too long. 
I’m frightened because Christine is hard to wake at night 
— ^because I can’t work any more.”) 

“I’ve got to,” she said briefly, sternly. 

He walked from the window to the door. 

“You don’t care. You care more for these two than 
you do for me. I’ve lived hard and clean. I don’t lie or 
steal. I’ve never thought of any girl but you. And you 
put me second to a feckless thief and a ” 

She stopped him. Not with a word or gesture, but with 
the sheer upward blaze of a chivalrous anger. And it 
was not only anger. That would have been bearable. It 
was sorrow, reproach, a kind of grieving bewilderment, 
as though he had changed before her eyes. 

“You’d — you’d better go, Robert. We’re both of us 
out of hand. We’U see each other to-morrow. It will be 
different then.” 

He went without a word. But on the dark stairs he 
stood still, leaning back against the wall, his wet face 
between his hands. He said aloud : “Oh, Francey, 
Francey, I can’t live without you!” He would have gone 


THE DARK HOUSE 


167 


back to tell her, but he was physically at the end of every- 
thing, and at the mercy of the power outside himself. He 
thought : 

“There’s still to-morrow. I’U tell her everything. I’ll 
help her to get away. I’ll make her understand that it 
wasn’t Howard. To-morrow it will be all right.” 

And so went on. And the stolid Georgian door closed 
with a hard metallic click, setting its teeth against him. 

“Now you see how it happens, Robert Stonehouse!” 

§S 

But he came out of a night of fever and hallucination 
with very little left but the will to keep on. Apathy, like 
a thin protecting skin, had grown over him, shielding him 
from further hurt. He did not want to feel or care any, 
more. The very memory of that “scene” with Francey 
made him shrink with a kind of physical disgust. Only no 
more of that. Back to work — back to reason. If she 
wished to go in pursuit of Howard and Gertie she would 
have to go. It seemed strange to him now that he should 
have minded so desperately. 

Christine called to him as he passed her door. 

“Is that you, Robert Have you had your breakfast? 
Wait, dear — I’ll get it for you.” 

But he crept down the stairs as though he had not 
heard. Only not so much caring — if only he could forget 
that he cared. 

“Good-bye, dearest, good-bye!” 

Her voice followed him, plaintive and clear. It seemed 
to lodge itself in his heart so that ever afterwards he had 
only to think of her to hear it like the echo of a small, sad 
bell. He went on stubbornly, in silence. 

He did not try to see Francey. They met inevitably 
in the wake of the surgeon on whose post they worked, 
but they did not speak. Their eyes avoided one another. 
Yet he could not forget her. It was not the old conscious- 
ness that had been full of mystery and delight. It hurt. 


168 


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He felt her unsapped joyous living like a blow on his own 
aching weariness. He thought bitterly of her. How easy 
life had been for her! She played at living. Her airy 
fancies, her belief in God, her vagrant tenderness for the 
rag and bobtail of the earth were all part of that same 
thing. She had never suffered. Her people had died, but 
they had died in the odour of sanctity and wealth. She had 
never had to ask herself : “If I fall out, what will become 
of us.?’^ She saw pain and poverty through the softening 
veil of her own well-being. Nothing could really hurt 
her. 

(And yet how lovable she was! He watched her cov- 
ertly as she stood at the surgeon’s elbow — a little graver 
than usual — a little paler. To-day there was no warm 
glance with a flicker of a smile in its serene depths to 
greet him. Her hands were thrust boyishly into the 
pockets of her white coat, and there was an air of austere 
earnestness about her that sat quaintly, charmingly upon 
her youth. He loved the businesslike simplicity of her 
dress — the dark, tailored skirt and white silk shirt — im- 
maculate — expressive of her real ability, an accustomed 
wealth. He flaired and hated its expensiveness.) 

Money. That lay at the root of everything. If she 
were ill — what would it matter.? A mere set-back. Her 
work would wait for her. Money would wave anxiety 
from her door. So she was never ill. Even though she 
loved him and they had quarrelled she had kept her fresh 
skin and clear eyes. Even if she had worried a little, in 
the end she had slept peacefully. (He felt his own shabbi- 
ness, his exhaustion, his burning hands and eyes, his dry 
and bitter mouth like a sort of uncleanliness.) 

And there in the midst of his jagged thoughts there 
flickered a red anger — a desire to hurt too, to strike, to 
come to grips at last with her laughing philosophy of life 
— to tear it down and batter it into the dust and misery in 
which he stood. 

They had come to No. lO’s bedside. Things had gone 
badly with No. 10. She had stood a successful operation. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


169 


but there had been severe haemorrhage, and, as Robert 
had said, there was no constitution to fight at the turning 
point. Her face just showed above the creaseless sheet. 
Death had already begun to clear away the mask of vice 
and cynicism and a lost prettiness peered through. But 
the eyes were terribly alive and old. So long as they kept 
open there could be no mistaking her. They travelled 
from face to face, and sought and questioned. Her voice ^ 
sounded reedy and far-off. 

“Not going this trip, am I, doctor.?” 

Rogers patted the bed. 

“Certainly not. Going along fine. What do you ex- 
pect to feel like — with a hole like that in your inside.? 
Next time you have a young man, see he doesn’t carry 
firearms.” 

One of the eyes tried to wink — ^pitifully, obscenely. 

“You bet your life. Don’t want to die just yet.” 

“Nobody does.” 

They drew a little apart. Rogers consulted with his 
colleague. The serious loss of blood must be made good. 

A transfusion. There was a young man who had offered 
himself. A suitable subject. 'This afternoon at the 
latest. 

They moved on. Robert spoke to the man next him. 
But he knew that Francey heard him. He meant her to 
hear. 

“It’s crazy. They ought to be glad to let a woman 
like that slip out. If she lives she’ll only infect more 
people with her rottenness. She’s better dead. Instead 
of that they’ll suck out somebody else’s vitality to save 
her. The better the life the more pleased they’ll be to risk 
it. This sacrificing the strong to the weak — a snivelling 
sentimentality.” 

The man he spoke to glanced at him curiously — it was 
not usual for Robert Stonehouse to speak to anyone — 
and said something about the medical profession and the 
sanctity of life. Robert laughed. He argued it over 
with himself. It was true. For that matter Howard and 


170 


THE DARK HOUSE 


Gertie and Connie would all be better dead. There was no 
use or purpose in their living. Only sentimentalists like 
Francey wanted to patch them up and keep them on their 
feet. 

People who cluttered up life ought to be cleared out 
of it. 

He felt light-headed, yet extraordinarily sure of him- 
self again. He answered Rogers^ questions with the old 
lucidity. And presently he found himself in the corridor, 
still arguing his theme over. He would prove to Francey 
that she must let Howard and Gertie go to the devil and 
they would never quarrel again. 

He came to the head of the stairs where they met after 
the morning’s work. 

The steps were very broad and white and shallow, and 
gave the impression of great distance. Mr. Ricardo, at 
the bottom of them, was a black speck — a bird that had 
blundered into the building by mistake and beaten itself 
breathless against the walls. As he saw Robert he began 
to drag himself up, limping. He seemed to shrivel then 
to a mere face, stricken and yellow, that gaped and 
mouthed. 

Robert did not move. He stood leaning against the 
balustrade. It was as though an iron fist had smashed 
through the protecting wall about him, letting in a rush 
of bitter wind. 

“Robert — Robert !” 

He nodded. 

“I’m coming ” 

For he had known instantly. 

§6 

The tragic journey through the streets was over. They 
stood beside her. Robert knew too much to struggle, but 
Ricardo’s voice went on, saying the same things over and 
over again, pleading. 

“Do something — do something. Wake her, Robert, 


THE DARK HOUSE 


171 


dear boy, for God’s sake. What is the use of all your 
studying if you can’t even wake her.?^” 

“It’s no use,” he said. 

“She was sitting there — I was to have read her the 
last chapter — she was so quiet — asleep she seemed — for 
an hour — I sat — not moving — then I was afraid!” 

Robert nodded. 

She had laid his supper for him. It was much too early 
for her to have laid it. She had spread muslin over the 
bread and cheese. And then she had sat down quietly 
in her chair by the window and waited. (How long had 
she waited there.? Many years perhaps. It had been 
very lonely for her.) Her head was thrown back a little, 
and her closed eyes lifted to the light that came over the 
stable roofs. The grey hair hung in wisps about the 
transparent face — very still, as though the air had died 
too. She had changed profoundly, indefinably. She 
looked younger, and there was a new serenity about the 
faintly opened mouth. Her hands lay peacefully on the 
little shabby bag. Her little feet in the ill-fitting shoes 
just reached the ground. In a way it was all so familiar. 
And yet he felt that if he touched her he would find out 
that this was not Christine at all. This was something 
that had belonged to her — as poignant, as heart-rending 
as a dress that she had worn. 

“Robert, isn’t there anything — to do?” 

“No.” 

They had nothing to say to one another. They had 
made a strange trio — lonely and outcast by necessity — 
but now a link had snapped and it was all over. They 
stood apart, each by himself. Ricardo, crouching against 
the window-sill, pressed his hand to his side as though he 
were hurt and bleeding to death. He said, almost 
inaudibly : 

“I’ve no one. Nobody will ever listen. She believed 
in me. She was sure that one day — I would go out — and 
tell the truth. She knew I wasn’t — a cowardly — beaten 
jl old man.” 


172 


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Robert could not touch her whilst Ricardo stood there 
crying. Her repose was too dominating. And if he 
touched her something terrible and incalculable might 
happen. He felt as though he were standing on the edge 
of a precipice, and that suddenly he might let go and 
pitch over. 

It had come true at last — ^his boy’s nightmare that had 
grown up with him — that only waited for darkness to 
show itself. Christine had left him. She was dead, and it 
seemed that he had no one in the world. For Francey, 
loving him as she did, had failed him. But Christine had 
never failed him. Never at any time had she asked, “Are 
you a good little boy, Robert.?” It would never have 
occurred to her. She was so sure. She had loved him and 
believed in him unfalteringly, and, in her quiet way, died 
for him. 

Ricardo drew himself up. He plucked at Robert’s 
sleeve. A change had come over him in the last minutes. 
His sunken brown eyes had dried and become rather ter- 
ribly alert. Something too fine — too exquisitely balanced j 
in him had been disturbed and broken beyond hope. 

“It proves what I have suspected for a long time, Rob- j 
ert. You know it’s not a light thing to make an enemy ! 
like that. He’s taken his time, but you see in the end he 
has taken everything I had. First he made me a liar and 
a hypocrite. Then he took you. He sent that girl 
specially to come between us. And now Miss Christine. 

I suppose he thinks that’s done for me. But it’s a great 
mistake to make people desperate, Robert. You should 
always leave them some little thing that they care for and 
which makes them cowards. Now, you see, I simply don’t I 
care any more. I don’t care for myself or even my poor j 
sister. I’m going to fight him in the open, gloves off. I’ll i 
wrestle with him and prevail. I’ll give blow for blow. I’m | 
going now to Hyde Park to tell people the truth about 
him. They take him altogether too lightly, Robert. | 
They’re inclined to laugh at him as of no account. That’s j 


THE DARK HOUSE 


173 


a great mistake, too. I shall warn them.’^ He nodded 
mysteriously. “God is a devil — a cruel, dangerous devil.” 

Then he bent and kissed Christine’s hand, very solemnly 
and tenderly, as some battered, comical Don Quixote 
might have done before setting out on a last fantastic 
quest. And presently Robert heard him patter down the 
narrow stairs and over the cobbles to the open street. 

They were alone now. He bent over her and said: 
“Christine — Christine,” reassuringly, so that she should 
not be afraid, and gathered her in his arms. How little 
she was — no heavier than a child — and cold. Her grey 
head rested against his shoulder. If she had only stirred 
and laughed, and said: “Your father was strong too!” 
he would have answered gently. He would have been glad 
that the memory of his father could make her happy. But 
it was all too late. 

He carried her into her room. It was like her to have 
left it so neat and ordered — each thing in its place — her 
out-door shoes standing decorously together under the 
window, and her best skirt peeping out from behind the 
cretonne curtain. Her hair-brush, with the comb planted 
in its bristles, lay exactly in the middle of the pine-wood 
dressing-table. When she had put it there, she had not 
known that it was for the last time. 

Or had she known.? She had called out to him so 
insistently. She had wanted to say good-bye. And he 
had gone on, not answering. 

They said that people, at the end, saw their whole life 
pass before them. Perhaps she had seen hers. Perhaps 
she had trodden the old road that he was travelling over 
now. Only her vision of it would be different. It was 
James Stonehouse and Robert’s mother that she would 
see — radiant figures of wonderful, unlucky people — and 
little Robert, who belonged to both of them, tagging in 
the rear. 

But he saw her — Christine lying white and still under 
the great mahogany side-board, Christine coming back 
day after day in gallant patience to scrub the floors and 


174 


THE DARK HOUSE 


his ears, and pay the bills and chase away the duns, and 
do whatever was necessary to keep the staggering Stone- 
house menage on its feet. 

She had held him close to her and comforted him. 

Her splendid faithfulness. 

He laid her on the narrow bed against the wall, and 
smoothed her dress and folded her hands over her breast. 
Her bag, which he had gathered up with her rolled on to 
the floor. A book fell out. He picked it up mechanically. 
It was a little Bible, and on the fly-leaf was written : 

“From Jim and Constance 

to their friend, Cheistine.” 

The writing was his father’s. It had faded, but one 
could still see how regular and beautiful it was. Then 
the date. His own birthday — the first of all the un- 
fortunate birthdays. 

He looked at it for a long time, stupidly, not realizing. 
Then suddenly he saw it — in a new light. Ricardo. 
How frightfully — excruciatingly funny. Ricardo. He 
felt that he was going to laugh — shout with laughter. 
It was horrible. Laughter rising and falling — like a sort 
of awful sickness — choking him. 

Instead his heart broke. He flung himself down beside 
her and pressed his face against her cold, thin cheek. 
And, instead of laughter, sobs that tore him to pieces — 
and at last, in mercy, tears. 

“Oh, Christine, Christine — my own darling! I did love 
you — I never told you — ^you never, never knew how 
much I” 

The earth-old cry of unavailing, inevitable remorse. 

§7 

So there was no one but Francey now. 

He did not know what he hoped, or indeed if he 
hoped for anything. He turned to her instinctively. 
And when the door of the ward opened he did, in fact, 


feel a faint lifting of the flat indifference which had 
followed on that one difficult rending surrender. He 
went to meet her. If she had looked at him with her 
usual straightness, she might have remembered the boy 
of whom she had been fond — a small, queer boy, who 
did not like having his face washed, and who came to her 
truculent and swaggering, with smears under his red 
eyes. 

Even then it is doubtful whether she could have changed 
the course on which both of them were set. 

He did not want her to see. And yet, unknown to 
himself, he did count on her instant understanding, on 
some releasing, quickening word or look that would give 
back life to the dead thing in him. But her eyes, pre- 
occupied and unhappy, avoided him. He could not have 
appealed to her. He could not have said, as he had meant 
to do, “Christine is dead.” He was silenced by the cer- 
tain knowledge that all real communication between them 
had been broken off, 

“No. 10 is going to pull through,” she said. 

They walked slowly down the corridor. He found it 
difficult to keep his feet. He wondered vaguely why she 
should talk of No. 10 when Christine was dead. He was 
puzzled — confused. 

“It seemed likely,” he muttered. “Rogers had got his 
teeth into her.” 

“I suppose you think he was a fool to try?” 

(What was she talking about? He would have to ar- 
range for the funeral. And the money. He did not 
know whether there would be money enough. It was 
hideous — to think of a thing like that — to have to go into 
a shop and say to some bored shopkeeper : “I want a nice 
cheap coffin, please.” For Christine — for whom he had 
never been able to buy so much as a bunch of flowers.) 

“I — I don’t know.’^ 

“You see, I heard what you said.” 

(What had he said? He tried to remember. No. 10. 
Better dead. Yes, of course that was it. He couldn’t go 


176 


THE DARK HOUSE 


back on that. His mind seemed to strain and stagger 
under the challenge like a half-dead horse under the 
whip.) 

‘‘She didn’t hear me, anyway.” 

“I want to know — ^was it just — ^just a sort of pose — or 
did you mean it.?” 

“It was true.” 

“That doesn’t seem to me to matter. It was a beastly 
thing to have thought — ^beastlier to have said ” 

He stopped short, as though she had struck him across 
the face. For an instant he was blind with pain, but 
afterwards he steadied, grew deadly cool and clear-headed. 
There was a constant movement in the corridor and he 
turned abruptly, almost with authority, into an empty 
operating theatre. Instinctively he had chosen his 
ground. Here was symbolized everything that he trusted 
and believed in — a cool, dispassionate seeking, the ruth- 
less cutting out of waste. Yet in the half-light the place 
surrounded them both with a ghostly, almost sinister un- 
reality. Its stark immaculateness lay like a chill, ironic 
hand on their distress. It made mock of their unhappi- 
ness. It divested them of their humanity. The nauseat- 
ing sweetness that still lingered in the sterilized air was 
like incense offered up on the grotesque sacrificial altar 
that stood bare and brutal beneath the glass-domed roof. 

And now Robert saw Francey’s face. It was white and 
pinched and unfamiliar, as though all her humour and 
whimsical laughter and loving-kindness had been twisted 
awry in a bitter fight with pain. But he knew her eyes of 
old. Long ago he had seen them with the same burning 
deadly anger. And he knew that it was all over. Their 
patient antagonism had come to grips at last over the 
bodies of their suffering love for one another. 

Even then she held back. 

“You don’t know how hard life can be. It was hard 

for her ” But at that he burst out laughing, and 

she added quickly, reading his thought: “Nothing that 


THE DARK HOUSE 


177 


you’ve gone through is of any use if it hasn’t taught you 
pity.” 

“Your pity would take a half-dead rat from a terrier.” 

“You have no right to judge,” she persisted. 

He smiled with white lips. 

“Oh, yes, I have! We all have. We condemn men to 
prison — to death.” 

“You do believe in God,” she said bitterly. “You be- 
lieve in yourself.” 

“It comes to this, Francey, doesn’t it? You’re through 
with me? You don’t care any more?” 

Her eyes narrowed with a kind of desperate humour. 
It was as though for a moment she had regained her old 
vision of him — a sad queer little boy. 

“You say that because you want to shirk the truth. 
You’re almost glad — ^presently you will be very glad. 
You never did want to care — not from the first. Caring 
got in your way. You will be free now.” She waited, 
and then added very quietly, without anger: “I love you. 
I dare say I always shall — but I couldn’t live with you — 
it would break my heart if we should come to hate one 
another. Don’t think any more about it. I’ll have gone 
to-morrow, and I’ll try to arrange not to come back till 
you’re through. It will be all right.” 

“Francey, it’s such a foolish thing to quarrel about.” 

“It’s everything,” she said simply. 

She turned to go. Even then he could have stopped 
her. He could have said: “Francey, Christine died this 
morning!” and their sad enmity might have melted in 
grief and pity. But what she had said was true. It was 
everything. And his reason, his will, rising up out of the 
general ruin, monstrous and powerful, stood like an ad- 
monishing shadow at his elbow. 

“It’s much better. There’s nothing to make a coward 
of you now. You’re free.” 

He half held out his hand, but it was only a convulsive, 
dying movement. He let her go. 


PART in 

I 

§1 

A s to Gyp Labelle, if she had known the part she 
played in their lives, which in the nature of things 
was not possible, she would have broken into that famous 
laugh of hers. 

To her, at any rate, it would have seemed immensely, 
excruciatingly funny. 


§2 

As the result of an exchange of two remarkably casual 
notes they met at Brown’s for dinner. Brown’s had oc- 
curred to both of them as a natural meeting-place. Cos- 
grave, it is true, had only dined there once and that free 
(as a friend of Brown’s friend), but the impression made 
upon a stomach accustomed to Soho and tea-shop fare 
had been indelible. Stonehouse himself dined there as a 
matter of custom. Besides, there was" a touch of senti- 
ment to their choice — a rather bitter sharp-tasting senti- 
ment like an aperitif. 

Brown himself had aged considerably, and did not re- 
member very well. 

“Old friend of the doctor’s, sir.? Well, so am I. Getting 
on — getting on. But I’m waiting till I can squeeze my 
money’s worth out of him. When’s that knighthood 
coming, doctor.? I want to be able to tell that story — as 
good a story as you’d read anywhere. He’s got to keep 
me alive, sir, till it comes true.” 

173 


He went off to the kitchen tittering to himself over an 
ancient joke which, together with his “feeling” for the 
psychological moment in the matter of roasts, was about 
all that was left him. 

Stonehouse, his chin resting in his hand, studied the 
menu from which they had already chosen. 

“When the last Honours List came out, he was quite 
serious and pathetic about it,” he said. “Things move 
either too slowly or too quickly for old people. He does 
realize that I make quite a good story as I stand, but he 
wants the finishing touches — the King clasping me by the 
hand, or kissing me on both cheeks, or whatever he thinks 
happens on those occasions — and wedding bells as a grand 
finale.” 

“The place seems to have grown shabby,” Cosgrave 
said. “Or perhaps it’s only me.” 

“Oh, no. It is shabby. And perhaps you’ve noticed, 
they don’t wait here as they used to.” 

Cosgrave looked directly at his companion, almost for 
the first time, and caught a spark in the eyes that stared 
into his — a rather dangerous spark, which cleverer people 
than himself had found difficult to make sure of. Then 
he laughed flatly. 

“You can see how funny it is now ” 

“I always did.” 

“ — ^because you were so sure it would pan out — like 
this. How long is it?” 

“About eight years.” 

“My word! Let’s — ^let’s look at one another and take 
stock,” 

Stonehouse sat back and bore the inspection with a 
faint smile. He knew himself, and how he impressed 
others. The eight' years had done a great deal for him. 
His strength had cast its crudeness and had attained a 
certain grace — the ease of absolute control and tried con- 
fidence in itself. He still dressed badly — ^indifferently, 
rather — ^but his body had toned down to the level of the 
fine hands, which he held loosely clasped upon the table. 


180 


THE DARK HOUSE 


He looked at once very young and very fine drawn and, 
as Cosgrave thought, a little cruel. 

“You seem — awfully well and prosperous, Robert. 
And a sight better looking.’^ 

Stonehouse laughed. All he said in reply was : 

“And you look prosperous and iU. What was it? 
Enteric ?” 

Cosgrave shrugged his thin shoulders. He was stiU 
flamboyantly red-headed and generously freckled, but now 
that the first flush of excitement had ebbed, his face showed 
a parchment yellow. His eyes, wistful in their setting, 
were faded, as though a relentless tropical sun had drunk 
up their once vivid, boyish colouring. 

“Oh yes, that and a few other trifles. I think Pve 
housed most West African bugs in my time. Everyone 
had them, but I was such poor pasture that I got off 
better than most. Three of my superiors died of ’em, and 
I stepped right into their shoes. It pays, you see, if you 
can hold out. People like a fellow who isn’t always 
clamouring to come home — and you bet I never did. But, 
finally, I took an overdue leave and a hunk of savings and 
trekked back. I’d always planned it — a good time, you 
know — ^but somehow it hasn’t come off. I expect I left 
it too long. In the end I didn’t really want to come at 
all — wanted to lie down and die, but hadn’t the strength 
of mind to insist. I’d been in London a week before I 
wrote you — ^just drifting round — too weak-kneed to take 
the first step. I tore up that idiotic note three times.” 

“Well, as long as you posted the fourth effort,” Stone- 
house said, “it’s all right.” 

They fell then unexpectedly into one of those difficult 
silences which beset the road of friends who have been 
separated too long. The past stood at their elbow like an 
importunate and shabby ghost. And yet it was all they 
had to lead them back into the old intimacy. 

“We’ve got too much to say,” Cosgrave broke out at 
last, with a painful effort, “too much ground>to cover — 
and I dare say we don’t want to cover it. If we’d written 


THE DARK HOUSE 


181 


— ^but I never heard from, you after that one letter — after 
Miss Christine’s death.” 

“I was ill,” Stonehouse explained, eating tranquilly. 
“I got through my finals with a temperature which would 
have astonished my examiners, and then I went to pieces 
altogether. Had to go into hospital myself. A nervous 
breakdown. Three months I had of it. They were very 
decent to me, and when I came out they got me a berth as 
ship’s doctor on one of the smaller transatlantic liners. 
I got hold of things again and pulled them my way. But 
I didn’t want to look back. My illness had made a definite 
break — I wanted to keep free.” 

Cosgrave nodded. He had been playing with his food, 
and now a look of disgust and weariness came into his 
thin face. 

‘T can understand that. I suppose it would have been 
better if I’d left well alone, and not written at all.” 

“It wouldn’t have made much difference,” Stonehouse 
said: “A week or two. Sooner or later we’d have run 
into one another. People who’ve been at school together 
always seem to. And you and I especially.” 

“I don’t know. I was always a poor specimen — I never 
meant much to you.” 

Stonehouse looked up at, him and smiled. This time 
it was an unmistakable smile and rather charming, like a 
warm line of light falling across his face. 

“I was awfully glad to get your letter,” he said. “I’d 
begun to worry rather.” 

Cosgrave fiushed up. 

“That’s — that’s about the nicest thing that’s happened 
to me for a long time. I’d probably cry with pleasure — 
only I don’t seem able to feel much anyway. It’s those 
damn bugs, I suppose 1” 

“I’ll pull you out of that.” 

“Got me diagnosed already 

“It’s not very difficult.” 

“I suppose — I suppose you’re an awful swell, Stone- 
house.” 


“Not yet. I’m better at my job than a great many men 
who are swells. But I’m yoimg — that’ll cure itself. Oh, 
yes — I’m all right. Things have gone on coming my 
way. I’ll tell you about it sometime.” 

Cosgrave’s eyes had rounded with their old solemn 
admiration. 

“A fashionable West-End surgeon — oh, my word! I 
say, have you got a bed-side manner tucked away 
somewhere.?” 

“No. That’s not fashionable for one thing, and for 
another, it wouldn’t suit my style. I’m not interested in 
people. I’m interested in their diseases. They know it, 
and rather like it.” A touch of chill scorn showed itself 
for a moment in his face. “They’re frightened of me. 
I’m as good, as an electric shock to their lethargic, over- 
fed carcasses. They can’t get over a young man with his 
way to make who wipes his boots on them. They have to 
come back for more.” 

Cosgrave gave his little toneless laugh. 

“I wish to God you’d frighten me. You know, when I 
felt how rotten I was I thought of you. You always 
bucked me up — I believe I had a fool idea that I’d find you 
in some scrubby suburban practice. Shows the bugs must 
have got into my brain too, doesn’t it.? Now I suppose 
I’ll have to ask you to reduce your fees.” 

“I’ll let you down easy. Say, a guinea a consultation I” 

“I could manage that — if you don’t want to consult too 
often. I’ve got my bit saved. Not much to squander on 
out there, except whisky, and I never took to that. Be- 
sides — my father’s dead. He didn’t mean to leave me his 
money — ^you know how he loathed me — ^but there was a 
mix-up over the will that was to cut me out — not properly 
witnessed or something. Anyhow, I came out into a few 
thousand. Rather a joke on the old man, wasn’t it.?” 

“One might almost hope for another life if one were 
sure he were grinding his teeth over it.” 

A faint perplexity flickered across the sallow face. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


183 


“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t seem to bear him any parti- 
cular grudge now. Perhaps it would be better if I could. 
When one’s young one judges very harshly. Parents and 
kids don’t understand each other — not really — and don’t 
always love each other either, if the truth were known. 
Why should they.?^ The old man and I were like strangers 
tied to one another by the leg. I used to think if I could 
pay him back for all the beastly times he gave me I’d die 
happy. But I don’t feel like that now. I expect he was 
pretty miserable himself. There’s too much of that sort 
of thing for us to wish it on to one another.” 

“You’re very tolerant,” Stonehouse said. “I’m not. 
But then I haven’t inherited anything.” He stopped 
abruptly and his manner hardened. But Cosgrave did 
not pursue the subject. His interest had suddenly 
slumped into what was evidently an habitual apathy, and 
only when they had paid their bill and drifted out into 
the street did he revert for a moment to the past. 

“And the Gang — and Frances Wilmot.^” he asked. He 
looked shyly at his companion’s profile, which showed up 
for a moment in a bold, tranquil outline against the lamp- 
light. It betrayed nothing. 

“We might walk back to my rooms and talk in peace. 
Oh — Francey Wilmot.?^ I don’t know much. She went 
abroad — finished her course very late — she was always a 
bit of a dilettante. People with money usually are.” 

Cosgrave said no more. He knew all he wanted to 
know. It saddened him. Somehow he had counted on that 
half-divined romance, had played with it in his fancy as 
with a kind of vicarious happiness. 

§3 

On board the ss. Launceston there had arrived, an hour 
before sailing, an American gentleman — a certain Mr. 
Horace Fletcher, who, having been called home suddenly, 
had had to take what accommodation he could get on the 
first available boat. Two days later he had lain uncon- 


184 


THE DARK HOUSE 


scious, strapp€d to the captain’s table, whilst the ship’s 
doctor, a young man, himself in the horrible throes of sea- 
sickness, had performed a radical operation for acute 
mastoiditis. There had been no facilities. The whole 
thing had been in the last degree makeshift. The half- 
trained stewardess had held his instruments ready for 
him, and the sea-sickness, comic in retrospect, had 
weighed heavily against Mr. Fletcher’s chance of seeing 
land again. Nevertheless, the eminent New York surgeon, 
consulted at the first opportunity, had pronounced the 
operation a neat performance — ^under the circumstances a 
masterpiece. 

It was the nearest possible approach to a medical 
advertisement. Mr. Fletcher was a member of a well- 
known New York family, and the papers had given the 
story, with fantastic details as to the ship’s doctor’s 
career, a first-page prominence. Mr. Fletcher himself 
had proved to be both generous and grateful. In assess- 
ing the value of his own life at £1,000, he had argued with 
good humour and good sense, he had erred on the side of 
modesty, and Robert Stonehouse, having ^weighed the 
argument gravely, had accepted its practical conclusion 
as just and reasonable. He had taken rooms, thereupon, 
if not actually in Harley Street, at least under the ram- 
parts, fitted them out with the most modem surgical appli- 
ances that his capital allowed, and had sat down to wait. 
Fortunately he had learnt the art of starving before. He 
slept in a garret, and the bottom drawer of the handsome 
mahogany desk in his consulting-room knew the grim 
secret of his mid-day meals. But in six months the tide 
had turned. Doctors had remembered him from his hospi- 
tal days when, if they had not liked him, they had leamt 
to respect his genius and his courage, and had sent him 
patients. The patients themselves, oddly enough, took a 
fancy to this gaunt, very serious young man, who so obvi- 
ously cared nothing at all about them, but whose interest 
in their diseases was almost passionate. And within two 
years the tide had brought him in sight of land. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


185 


This was what he had meant by “getting hold of things 
again and pulling them his way.” There was perhaps 
something rather simple in a theory of life which had 
necessitated so much suffering on the part of Mr. Fletcher 
in order that Dr. Stonehouse might take the first long 
stride in his career. But Cosgrave, listening to Stone- 
house’s own account of the incident, saw in it only an 
example of a strange, inexorable truth. What men called 
“Fate” was the shadow of themselves. They imposed their 
characters upon events, significant or insignificant, will- 
ingly or unwillingly. Beyond that there was no such 
thing as Fate at all. 

They stepped back from the crowd into the shelter of 
the Piccadilly Tube. They had been walking the streets 
for an hour, and as much of their lives as they were able 
to tell one another had been told. Now they were both 
baffled and tired out. Of what had really happened to 
them they could say nothing, and their memories, disin- 
terred in a kind of desperate haste (“Do you remember 
that row with Dickson about my hair, Robert.'^”) had 
crumbled, after a moment’s apparent vitality, into a heap 
of dust. It was all too utterly dead — ^too unreal to both 
of them. The things that had mattered so much, which 
had seemed so laughable or so tragic, were like the repeti- 
tion of a story in which they could only force a polite 
interest. Their laughter, their exclamations, sounxied 
shallow and insincere. 

And yet it was borne in upon them that they did still 
care for one another. They had had no other friendship 
to compare with this. Strictly speaking, there had been 
no other friends. There had been acquaintances — people 
whom you talked to because you worked with them. 

Robert Stonehouse had always known his own loneli- 
ness. His patients believed in him; his colleagues re- 
spected him. Their knowledge of him went no further 
than the operating theatre where they knew him best. He 
had reckoned loneliness as an asset. But to feel it, as he 
felt it now beneath this stilted exchange, was to become 


aware of a iduU, stupid pain. He found himself staring 
over the heads of the people, and wishing that Cosgrave 
had never come back. And Cosgrave said gently, as 
though he had read his thought and had made up his 
mind to have done with insincerities : 

“YouVe not to bother about me, Robert. It’s been 
joUy, seeing you again and all that, but we’d better let it 
end here. It always puzzled me — your caring, you know, 
about a hapless fellow like myself. It’s against your 
real principles. I’m a dead weight. I couldn’t give 
anyone a solitary water-tight reason for my being alive. 

I think you did it because you’d got your teeth into me 
by accident and couldn’t let go. I don’t want you to , 
get your teeth into me again.” 

‘‘I don’t believe,” Stonehouse said, with an impatient 
laugh, “that I ever let go at all.” 

His attention fixed itself on the illuminated sign that i 
hung from the portico of the Olympic Theatre opposite, i 
and mechanically he began to spell out the flaming letters : 
“Gyp Labelle — Gyp Labelle !” At first the name scarcely 
reached his consciousness, but in some strange way it 
focused his disquiet. It was as though for a long time 
past he too had been indefinitely ill, and now at an ex- 
asperating touch the poisoned blood rushed to a head of 
pain. He felt Cosgrave plucking at his sleeve, fretfully 
like a sick child, raised to a sudden interest. 

“I say, Stonehouse, don’t you remember.?” 

“The Circus.? Yes, I was just thinking about it. It’s 
not likely to be the same though.” 

“Why not.? She was a nailer. Oh — ^but you didn’t 
think so, did you.? It was the woman on the horse — the 
big barmaid person — I forget her name — Madame — 
Madame ” 

It was ridiculous — ^but even now it annoyed him to be 
reminded of her essential vulgarity. There was a glamour 
— almost a halo about her memory because of aU that he 
had felt for her. A silly boy’s passion. But he would 
never feel like that again. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


187 


‘‘Well, she could ride, anyhow. I don’t know what 
your long-legged favourite was good for.” 

“She made me laugh,” Cosgrave said. He asked after a 
moment: “Have you ever wanted anything so much as 
you wanted to go to that Circus, Stonehouse?” 

“Oh, yes — crowds of things !” 

“I don’t believe it somehow. I know I haven’t. Oh, I 
say, I wish I could want again like that — anything — to 
get drunk — to go to the dogs — anything in the world. 
It’s this damnable not wanting. Do you know I’ve been 
trying every night this week to drift into that show — ^just 
to see if it were really that funny kid. I felt I ought to 
want to. Why, even the fellows down in Angola had 
heard of her.” 

“She’s probably well known in hotter places than that,” 
Stonehouse remarked. 

“Yes — so I gathered. That’s what made them so keen. 
They used to talk of her — teUing the wildest yams, as 
though it did them good just to think there was someone 
left alive who had so much go in them. Queer, isn’t it.? 
Do you remember what a susceptible chap I used to be — 
j that poor little Connie — what’s-her-name, whom I nearly 
scared out of her five senses.? Well, I’ve not cared a snap 
for any woman since then. And I want to — I want to. 
I’d be SO' awfully happy if I could only care for some nice 
girl and marry her. There was someone on the boat — 
such a jolly good sort — and I think if I only could have 
cared she’d have cared too. But I couldn’t. I tried to 
work myself up — but it was like scratching on a dead 
nerve — as though something vital had gone clean out of 
me.” 

I His voice cracked. Stonehouse, startled from his own 
reflections, became aware that Cosgrave, whose apathy 
ihad hung about them like a fog, hiding them from each 
other, was on the point of tears — of breaking down help- 
lessly in the crowded entrance. And instantly their old 
relationship was re-born. He took him by the arm. 


188 


THE DARK HOUSE 


sternly, authoritatively, as he had always done when little 
Rufus Cosgrave had begun to flag or cry. 

“You’re coming home with me. When you’re fit enough 
we’ll do the show opposite and make a night of it. We’ll 
see what going to the devil can do for you.” 

“Perhaps she’d make me laugh again,” Cosgrave said, 
quavering hysterically. 


§4 

At any rate he had kept faith with himself. That 
theatre-night with Frances Wilmot had been the first and 
last until now, and now assuredly he did not care any 
more. But it made him remember. How intoxicated he 
had been ! He had walked home like a man translated inta 
a strange country — words had rushed past his ears in 
floods of music, and the silver and black streets had been 
magic-built. Was it his youth, or had Francey, dancing 
before him, her head lifted to catch unearthly harmonies, 
thrown a spell over his judgment.? She had gone, and he 
was older — but he had a feeling that the disillusionment 
was not only in himself. It was in the atmosphere about 
him — in the stale air, stamped on the stereotyped gilt 
and plush of the shabby theatre and on the faces of the 
people. He wondered whether they had all grown too old. 
Perhaps the spirit which had driven them into these dark 
boxes to gaze open-mouthed, crying or laughing, through 
a peep-hole into a world of ideal happiness, or even ideal 
sorrow, was dead and gone like their faith in God and 
every other futile shadow which they had tried to inter- 
pose between themselves and truth. This that remained 
was perhaps no more than a tradition — a convention. 
When people were bored or unhappy they said: “Let’s 
go to a theatre !” and when they came out. they wondered 
why they had been, or what they had hoped for. 

Reality was beginning to press hard on men. It was 
driving them into an iron cul-de-sac, from which there 
was no escape. Suicide and madness, obscure and hideous 


THE DARK HOUSE 


189 


maladies of the brain herded in it. Perhaps, after all, 
there had been some value in those old fairy stories. And 
he remembered, with a faint movement of impatience, 
Francey Wilmot’s final shaft : “If there isn’t a God you’ll 
have to make one up.” But even if a man were to juggle 
with his own integrity, turn charlatan, there was no faith- 
serum which you could inject into a patient’s veins. 

Cosgrave sat limply in his stall, and by the reflected 
light from the stage Stonehouse could see his look of wan 
indifference. He was no better. All day long he lay on 
his bed in the small spare room Robert had given him 
and stared up at the white ceiling. There was a crack, 
running zig-zag from the window to the door, which re- 
minded him, so he said, of a river in Angola, a beastly 
slimy thing trailing through mosquito-infested swamps 
and villainous-tangled jungles. When he dozed it became 
real, and he felt the heat descend on him like a sticky 
hand, and heard the menacing drone of the mosquitoes 
and the splash of oars as unfriendly natives who had 
tracked him along the water’s edge shot out suddenly from 
under the shadow of the mango trees in their long boats — 
deadly and swift as striking adders. 

And then, near the door, the river broke off — poured 
into the open sea — or fell over a cataract — he did not 
know what — and he woke up with a sweating start and 
took his medicine. He was so painstakingly docile about 
his medicine that Robert Stonehouse gues,*<;d he had no 
faith in it. Sometimes indeed he had an idea that Cosgrave 
was rather sorry for him, very much as old people are 
sorry for the young, knowing the end to all their en- 
thusiasms. It was as though he had travelled ahead, and 
had found out how meaningless everything was, even his 
clever friend’s strength and cleverness. 

So he did not get better. And the forces that Robert 
Stonehouse had counted on had failed. He had been a 
successful physician outside his specialty and his sheer 
indifference to his patients as human beings had been one 
of his chief weapons. He braced them, imposing his 


190 


THE DARK HOUSE 


sense of values so that their own sufferings became insig- 
nificant, and they ceased to worry so much about them- 
selves. But with Cosgrave he was not indifferent. Some 
indefinable element of emotion had been thrown into the 
scales, upsetting the delicate balance of his judgment. 

And his old influence had gone too. It had failed him 
from that moment in Connie Edwards’ room when sud- 
denly Cosgrave had realized the general futility of things. 

“I’ll see him through all the same,” Stonehouse thought, 
with a kind of violence. “I’ll pull him through.” 

After the first few moments he had ignored the scene 
before him. It was boring — imbecile. Even to him, with 
his contempt for the average of human intelligence, it 
seemed incredible that the gyrating of a few half-naked 
women and the silly obscenities of a comedian dressed in a 
humourless caricature of a gentleman should hold the 
attention of sane men for a minute. Now abruptly the 
orchestra caught hold of him, shook him and dragged 
him back. It was playing something which he had heard 
before — on a street barrel-organ, and which he disliked 
now with an intensity for which he could give no reason. 
It was perhaps because he wanted to remain aloof and 
indifferent, and because it would not let him be. It de- 
stroyed his isolation. His pulse caught up its beat like 
the rest. His personality lost outline — merging itself 
into the cumbrous uncouth being of the audience. 

Though it was a rhythm rather than a tune it was not 
rag-time. Rag-time Stonehouse appreciated. He rec- 
ognized it as a symptom of the mal du siecle, a deliberate 
break with the natural rhythm of life, a desperate ennui, 
the hysterical pressure upon an aching cancer. Rag- 
time twitched at the nerves. This thing jostled you, 
bustled you. It was a shout — a caper — the ta-ra-ra- 
boom-de-ay of its day, riotous and vulgar. It was the 
sort of thing coster-women danced to on the pavements 
of Epsom on Derby night. 

The stage, set with a stereotyped drawing-room, was 
empty as the curtain rose. Two hands, dead white under 


THE DARK HOUSE 


191 


their load of emeralds, held the black hangings over the 
centre doorway — then parted them brusquely. Stone- 
house heard the audience stir in their seats, but there 
was only a faint applause. No one had come to the 
theatre for any other purpose than to see her, but they 
knew her history. And, after all, they were respectable 
people. 

Cosgrave caught him by the arm. 

“Oh, my word — it’s her right enough!” 

She stood there, motionless, her fair head with its mon- 
strous crest of many-coloured ostrich feathers flaming 
against the dead background. Her dress was impudent. 
It winked at its own transparent pretence at covering a 
body which was, in fact, too slender, too nervously alive 
to be quite beautiful (Stonehouse remembered her legs — 
the long, thin legs in the parti-coloured tights, like sticks 
of peppermint, belabouring the rotund sides of her im- 
perturbable pony). But her jewels clothed her. Their 
authentic fire seemed to blaze out of herself — to be fed 
by her. And each one of them, no doubt, had its romance 
— its scandal. That rope of pearls in itself was a king’s 
ransom. People nudged each other. It was part of the 
show that she should flaunt them. 

She had been a plain child, and now, if she was really 
pretty at all, it was after the fashion of most French 
women, without right or reason, by force of some secret 
magnetism that was not even physical. Her wide mouth 
was open in a rather vacant, childish smile, and she was 
looking up towards the gallery as though she were expect- 
ing something. “Hallo, everyone!” she said tentatively, 
gaily. They stared back at her, stolid and antagonistic, 
defying her. She began to laugh then, as she laughed 
every night at the same moment, spontaneously, shrilly, 
helplessly, until suddenly she had them. It was like a 
whirlwind. It spared no one. They were like dead leaves 
dancing helplessly in its midst. Even Stonehouse felt it 
at his throat, a choking, senseless laughter. 

He saw Cosgrave lean forward, and in the half light he 


192 


THE DARK HOUSE 


had a queer, startled look. With his thick red hair an^ 
small white face he might have been some sick thing of the 
woods scenting the air in answer to far-off familiar pip- 
ings. He made Robert Stonehouse see the faun in Frances 
Wilmot’s room, the room itself and Frances Wilmot, with 
her chin resting in her hands, gazing into the fire. The 
picture was gone almost before he knew what he had seen. 
But it was knife-sharp. It was as though a hand fum- 
bling over a blank wall had touched by accident a secret 
spring and a door had flown wide open, closing instantly. 

Gyp Labelle; 

If you dance with me 
You must dance to my tune 
Whatever it be.” 

She jumped into the incessant music as a child jumps 
into a whirling skipping-rope. She had a quaint French 
accent, but she couldn’t sing. She had no voice. And 
after that one doggerel verse she made a gesture of good- 
humoured contempt and danced. But she couldn’t dance 
either. It was a wild gymnastic — a display of incredible, 
riotous energy, the delirious caperings of a gutter-urchin 
caught in the midst of some gutter-urchin’s windfall by 
a jolly tune. A long-haired youth leapt on to the stage 
from the stage-box, and caught her by the waist and 
swung her about him and over his shoulder so that her 
plumes swept the ground and the great chain of pearls 
made a circle of white light about them both. 

‘‘Those pearls!” Stonehouse heard a man behind him 
say loudly. “Prince Frederick gave them to her. And 
then he shot himself. They belonged to the family. He 
had no right, of course, but she wanted them.” 

He could feel Cosgrave stir impatiently. 

It went on, as it seemed to him, for an incredible length 
of time. It was like a prairie fire that spread and blazed 
up, higher and brighter. And there was no escape. He 
had a queer conviction that his was the only static spirit 
in the whole theatre, that secretly, in their hearts, the 


THE DARK HOUSE 


193 


audience had flung themselves into the riot with her, the 
oldest and staidest of them, as perhaps they had often 
wanted to do when they heard a jolly tune like that. It 
was artless, graceless. One only needed to let oneself go. 

“I’m Gyp Labelle, 

Come dance with me.” 

The jaded disgust and weariness were gone. Something 
had come into the theatre that had not been there before. 
Nothing mattered either so much or so little. The main 
business was to have a good time somehow — not to worry 
or care. 

She had whirled catherine-wheel fashion, head over 
heels from end to end of the stage. The long-haired 
youth swept the hair from his hot, blue-jowled face in 
time to catch her, and they stood side by side, she with her 
thin arms stretched up straight in a gesture of triumph* 
her lips still parted in that curiously empty, expectant 
smile. 

Then it was over. Once the curtain rose to perfunc- 
tory applause. People settled back in their seats, or 
prepared to go. It was as though the Are had been with- 
drawn from a molten metal which began instantly to 
harden. A woman next to Stonehouse tittered. 

‘‘So vulgar and silly — I don’t know what people see in 
her.” 

“I want to get away,” Cosgrave said sharply. “It’s 
this beastly closeness.” 

He looked and walked as though he had been drinking. 

Although the show was not over, the majority of the 
audience had begun to stream out. Two men who loitered 
in the gangway in front of Stonehouse exchanged laconic 
comments. 

“A live wire, eh, what.?” 

For some reason or other Stonehouse saw clearly and 
remembered afterwards the face of the man who answered. 
It was bloated and full of a weary, humorous intelligence. 

“Life itself, my dear fellow, life itself!” 


194 


THE DARK HOUSE 


§5 

Cosgrave scarcely answered his companion's comments. 
He withdrew suddenly into himself, and after that he 
shirked the subject, understandably enough, for if he 
had had illusions on her account they must have been 
effectively shattered. But also he ceased to lie all day 
on his bed and stare up at the mosquito-infested river of 
his nightmare. He grew restless and shy, as though he 
were engaged with secret business of his own of which 
Stonehouse knew nothing, and of which he could say noth- 
ing. Yet Stonehouse had caught his eyes fixed on him 
with the doubtful, rather wistful earnestness of a child 
trying to make up its mind to confide. (There was still 
something pathetically young about Rufus Cosgrave. 
Now that his body was growing stronger, youth peered 
out of his wan face like a famished prisoner demanding 
liberty.) 

What he did with himself during the long hours when 
Stonehouse was in his consulting-room or on his rounds 
Stonehouse never asked. At night he sat at the study 
window of his friend’s flat (shabby and high up since all 
spare money was diverted to other and better purposes), 
and looked over the roofs of the houses opposite, smoking 
and watching the dull red glow that rose up from the 
blazing theatres westwards. 

“It is a fire,” he said once, “and all the cold, tired people 
in London come to warm their hands at it.” 

Robert Stonehouse went on with his writing under the 
lamplight. 

“Are ^ou cold.'^” 

“Not now.” He added imexpectedly : “You think I’d 
be all right, don’t you, if only you could have a go at my 
tonsils or my adenoids.^ I believe you’re just waiting to 
have a go at them.” 

“Your tonsils are septic,” Stonehouse agreed gravely. 
“I told you so, but I wouldn’t advise anything drastic 


THE DARK HOUSE 195 

until youVe stronger. We’ll think about it in a month 
or two. You’re better already.” 

Cosgrave chuckled to himself. In the shadow in which 
he sat the chuckle sounded elfish and almost mocking. 

“Oh, yes, I’m better!” 

Stonehouse took his first holiday for three years, and 
carried Cosgrave off with him to a rough shooting-box 
in the Highlands lent him by a grateful and sporting 
patient, and for a week they tramped the moors together 
and stalked deer and fished in the salmon river that ran 
in and out among the desolate hills. The place was little 
more than a shepherd’s cottage, growing grey and stub- 
born as a rock out of the heather, and beyond that prof- 
fered them occasionally by a morose and distrustful gillie 
they had no help or other companionship. They won 
their food for themselves, cooked it by the smoking fire, 
and washed heroically in the icy river water. A sting of 
winter was already in the wind and a melancholy and bitter 
rain swept the hills, giving way at evening to unearthly 
sunsets. They saw themselves as pioneers at the world’s 
end. And Stonehouse, who had calculated its effect on 
Cosgrave, was himself caught up in the fierce, rough 
charm of that daily life. He who had never played since 
that circus night played now in passionate earnest. He 
proved a good shot, and, for all his inexperience, an in- 
domitable and clever hunter. His close-confined physical 
energy could not shake itself. He liked the long and 
dogged pursuit, the cruel, often fruitless struggle up the 
mountain-sides, the patient waiting, the triumph of that 
final shot from a hand unshaken by excitement or fatigue. 
A stag showing itself for an instant against the sky-line 
called up all the stubborn purpose in him ; then he would 
not turn back until either his quarry had fallen to him, 
or night had swallowed them both. 

And Cosgrave, half forgotten, tagged docilely at his 
heels, or lay in the wet heather on the crest of a hill over- 
looking the world, and watched and waited with strange, 


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wide-open eyes. But he never gave the signal. He shot 
nothing. His failure seemed to amuse and even please 
him. A faint, excited colour came into his cheeks, lashed 
up by the wind and rain. And once, a hare running out 
from under his feet, he gave a wild “halloo!’^ like a boy 
and set off in pursuit, heaidlong down the stony hillside, 
his gun at full cock, threatening indiscriminate destruc- 
tion. 

“You might have killed yourself,” Robert said angrily. 
But Cosgrave laughed, his eyes narrowed to blue-grey 
slits as though he did not want Stonehouse to see all that 
was in them. 

“I shouldn’t have minded,” he panted, “going off on 
the crest like that — I wanted to run^ — I forgot.” 

“Well, for the Lord’s sake, don’t forget.” 

But for an instant at least he knew what Cosgrave 
meant. It had been the sight of that downward rushing 
hill and the sudden choking exultation. He had felt it 
too — that night in Acacia Grove in pursuit of the Great- 
est Show — and once again. He could smell the scent of 
the trees and the young grass blowing in his face. 

And at the bottom there had been a mysterious wood 
like a deep, green pool. 

Then on the eighth day Cosgrave disappeared. He 
had set out in the early morning for the nearest station 
to fetch their letters and fresh provisions, and at dusk 
a village youth reached Stonehouse with a note which had 
been scrawled in such haste that it was almost illegible. 
It was as though Cosgrave had yielded suddenly and 
utterly to a prolonged pressure. 

He had to go back to town. It was something urgent. 
Stonehouse was not to bother. He would be all right 
now. 

The next day Stonehouse stalked and brought down his 
first “Royal.” This time the chase had cost him every 
ounce of his endurance, and in the chill dusk he stood 
watching the gillie at his work on the lovely body (still 


THE DARK HOUSE 


197 


so warm and lissom that one could almost see the last 
sorrowful heaving of its golden flanks) with a kind of 
stolid triumph as though now he had wiped out that other 
failure. For he realized that he had been both too san- 
guine and too impatient. When you were angling a man 
with a sick brain back to health, you had to go slowly — 
delicately. 

“It^s because I care,’^ he thought, half amused and half 
angry. ‘‘And why do I ca.re? It’s as he said — a rotten 
habit.” 

But he returned to town. He tracked Cosgrave to his 
former lodging-house, where a stout, heavily-breathing 
landlady showed every readiness to be communicative and 
helpful. 

“Yes, sir — ^he’s here again — I think he was expecting 
you — mentioned your name — he’s out now and won’t be 
back till late — dinner at the Carlton, he said. If you’d 
like to leave a note, sir ” 

She led him upstairs and watched him with a fat amuse- 
ment as he stood silent and frowning on the threshold. 

“It is a fair mess,” she admitted blandly. “I was just 
trying to get things a bit together when you rang, sir. 
I’m to throw away all that old stuff, he said. A reg’lar 
new start he’s making — and a lively one, I don’t think. 
Theatres and supper parties ever since he’s been back, 
sir, and right glad I’ve been to see it, though I don’t ’old 
with carryings-on, in a general way. But after them 
there tropiks he’d need a change. He was that down, sir, 
when he first came, I didn’t know what to think.” 

The room might have belonged to a young dandy re- 
turned to London from the wilds of Central Africa. It 
was littered with half-open boxes, new suits, a disorderly 
regiment of shining, unworn boots and shoes, a pile of 
ties that must have been chosen for sheer expensiveness. 
(Stonehouse remembered the spotted affair with which 
Cosgrave had wooed Connie Edward’s approval.) The 
shabby suit in which Stonehouse had first met him had been 
flung with the other cast-offs into a far corner. It was all 


198 


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very young and reckless and jolly. One could see the 
owner, as he rampaged about the room, whistling and 
cursing in a good-humoured haste. 

“ ’Ere’s ’is writing-table; I’U just make room for you, 
sir ” 

He stopped her. 

“It doesn’t matter. If he’s to be at the Carlton I’ll 
probably look him up myself.” 

“Dining early, he said, sir — seven o Ciock.” 

“Yes — thank you.” 

A folded, grey-tinted letter lay half hidden in the gen- 
eral melee. It had a bold, irrepressible look, as though 
it were aware of having blown the room to smithereens 
and was rather amused. Stonehouse could see the large, 
sprawling hand that covered it. He touched it, not 
knowing why — nor yet that he was angry. Something 
that had been asleep in him for a long time stirred uneasily 
and stretched itself. 

“Ladies” — ^his companion simpered — “always the ladies, 
sir.” 

Stonehouse laughed. 

An hour later he was waiting for Cosgrave in the Carl- 
ton lounge. He had never been in the place before — or 
in any place like it — and it confused and astonished him. 
He was like a monk who had come unprepared into the 
crude noise and glitter of a society desperately pleasure- 
seeking. He could regard the men and women round him 
with contempt, but not with indifference, for they repre- 
sented a force against which he had not yet tried himself 
except in theory. And they set a new standard. Here 
his life and his attainments were of no account. What 
mattered was that he wore his travelling clothes, and that 
he stood stockily in the gangway like a man who does 
not know what is expected of him. It was ridiculous, 
but it was true that he became ashamed. 

But he held his ground stubbornly. He was not aware 
of any definite plan or expectation. If he had asked him- 
self what he intended he would have said he meant to look 


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199 


after Cosgrave, who was in a bad way. As a friend and 
as a doctor he had the right. He would not have admitted 
that his own personality had become involved, that he 
had felt himself obscurely challenged. 

Then he saw Cosgrave. He saw him before his com- 
panion, though for everyone else she obscured him utterly. 
She walked a few steps ahead, a bizarre, fantastic figure, 
her fair head with its deep band of diamonds lifted auda- 
ciously, the same fixed smile of childish expectancy on her 
oval, painted face. Her dress had left vulgarity behind. 
It was too much a part of herself — in its way too genuine 
— to be merely laughable. It was like her execrable danc- 
ing, the expression of an exuberant, inexhaustible life. 
As she walked, with short impatient steps, she swayed the 
great ostrich-feather fan and twisted her rope of pearls 
between her slender fingers. The open stare that greeted 
her seemed to amuse and please her. 

And Cosgrave. Saville Row, Stonehouse reflected rap- 
idly and contemptuously, must have been bribed to have 
turned out such perfection at such short notice. Too 
much perfection and too new. An upstart young rake. 
No, not quite that, either. Pain had lent an elusive beauty 
to the plain and freckled face, and happiness had made 
it lovable. It was obvious that he was trying to suppress 
his pride and astonishment at himself and not succeeding. 
The corners of his mouth quivered shyly and self-con- 
sciously, and the wide-open eyes were fixed with an engag- 
ing steadfastness on the figure in front of him as though 
he knew that if he looked to the right or left he would 
give himself away altogether. Stonehouse could almost 
hear his voice, high-pitched and boyish. 

‘‘Oh, I say, Robert, isn’t it wonderful — isn’t she splen- 
did?” 

Stonehouse himself stood right across their path. It 
was accidental, and now he could not move. He had 
grown to rely too much on his emotional inaccessibility, 
and the violence and suddenness of his anger transfixed 
him. This woman had trapped Cosgrave. She had caught 


200 


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him in the dangerous moment of convalescence — in that re- 
bound from inertia which carries men to an excess incredi- 
ble to their normal conscience. And she was infamous. 
She had broken one man after another. 

She could not have overlooked Stonehouse. Apart 
from his conspicuous clothes, his immobility and white-set 
face must have inevitably drawn her .attention to him. 
Her eyes, very blue and shadowless, met his stare with a 
kind of bonhomie — almost a Masonic understanding — and 
the uncompromising antagonism that replied seemed to 
check her. She hesitated, then as he at last stood back, 
passed on still smiling, but mechanically, as though 
something had surprised her into forgetting why she 
smiled. 

Cosgrave followed her. He brushed against Stonehouse 
without recognition. 

In that moment Stonehouse’s anger ran away with him. 
Thrusting aside the protests of a puzzled and rather 
frightened waiter he chose a table that faced them both. 
Cosgrave, blindly absorbed, never looked towards him, 
but twice she met his eyes, still with a faintly puzzled 
amusement, as though every moment she expected to pene- 
trate a mask of crude enmity to a no less crude admira- 
tion and desire. Then she spoke to Cosgrave laughingly, 
as Stonehouse knew, with the light curiosity of a woman 
who has met something tantalizingly novel, and Cos- 
grave turned, uttered an exclamation, and a moment later 
came across. He acted like a man suffering from aphasia. 
He seemed totally oblivious of the immediate past. They 
might have been casual friends who had met casually. He 
was radiant. 

‘What luck your being here. I didn’t know you went 
in for frivolity of this sort — if you call it frivolous din- 
ing in solitary state. Come over and join us. We’re just 
having a bite before the show. You remember Mademoi- 
selle Labelle, don’t you.?” 

Stonehouse nodded assent. He left his table at once. 


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201 


He seemed frigidly composed, but he was sure that she 
would not be deceived. She knew too much about men — 
that was her business — and she meant to pay him out, 
make him seem crude and absurd in his own eyes. 

“It’s Stonehouse — my old friend — I was telling you 
about him — we don’t need to introduce you, Mademoi- 
selle.” 

She gave him her hand, palm down, to kiss, and he 
turned it over deliberately. The fingers were loaded to 
the knuckles. He reflected that each of these stones had 
its history, tragic, comic or merely sordid. He let her 
hand drop. He saw that the affront had not touched her. 
Perhaps others had begun like that. 

cher docteur — ’e don’t like me,” she complained 
pathetically to Cosgrave. “ ’E sit opposite to me and 
glare like a ’ungry tiger. Believe me, I grow quite cold 
with fear. Tell me why you don’t like me. Monsieur.?” 

“He was only wanting to be asked,” Cosgrave broke in 
with his high, excited laugh. “Why, he introduced us. 
I was all down and out — couldn’t decide which bridge to 
chuck myself off from — ^and he lugged me into your show. 
He said ” 

“Well, what ’e say.?’^ 

Cosgrave blushed. 

“He said: ‘Let’s see what going to the devil can do 
for you.’ ” 

She jerked a jewelled thumb at him, appealing to Stone- 
house. 

“ ’E ’as cheek, that young man. ’E send in ’is card 
to my dressing-room, saying ’e got to meet me. Comme 
^‘a! As though anyone could just walk in! I was curi- 
ous to see a young man with cheek like that. So I let ’im 
come. Et nous voildr She leant across to Stonehouse, 
speaking confidentially, earnestly. “But you — c*est autre 
chose — monsieur est hien range — an artist perhaps 
for all that — ’e see me dance and think perhaps, ^Voyons 
\ — she cannot dance at all — nor sing — nor nozzings. Just 
enjoy ’erself.’ You think I don’t deserve all I get, hein?** 


202 


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“I think,” said Stonehouse smiling, “that there are 
others in your profession less fortunate. Mademoiselle.” 

As, for instance, that woman in the hospital — Frances 
Wilmot’s protegee. Queer how the memory of that ruined, 
frightened face peering over the bed-clothes and begging 
for life should come back to him after eight years. And 
yet the connexion was obvious enough. He looked at 
Mademoiselle Labelle with a new interest. It was impos- 
sible that she should have read his thoughts, but he knew 
by the little twist of her red mouth that she had under- 
stood his insult. She seemed to ponder over it dispas- 
sionately. 

“That’s true — c*est hien vrai, ^a, I ’ave been lucky. 
I shall always be lucky. Everybody knows that. They 
say: ‘Our Gyp, she will ’ave a good time at ’er funeral.’ 
No, no. Monsieur Rufus, I will not drink. If I drink I 
might dance — ’ere on this table — and ze company is so 
ver’ respectable. Listen.” She laid her hand on Stone- 
house’s arm as unconsciously as though he had been an 
old friend. “Listen. They play ze ‘Gyp Gal-lop.’ That 
is because I am ’ere. Ze conductor, ’e know me — he like 
’is leetle joke. C^est drdle — every time I ’ear it played I 

want to get up and dance and dance ” She hummed 

under her breath, beating time with her cigarette. 

‘‘I’m Gyp Labelle; 

If you dance with me. . . .” 

Obviously she knew that the severely elegant men and 
women on either hand watched her with a covert, chilly 
hostility. But there was something oddly simple in her 
acceptance of their attitude. Therein, no doubt, lay some 
of her power. She was herself. She didn’t care. She 
was too strong. She had ruined people like that — people 
every whit as hostile, and self-assured, and respectable — 
and had gone free without a scratch. She could afford 
to laugh at them, to ignore them, as it pleased her. 

(And what would Frances Wilmot with her wrong- 
headed toleration, have urged in extenuation.? A hard 


THE DARK HOUSE 


203 


life, perhaps? Stonehouse smiled ironically at himself. 
The old quarrel was like an ineradicable drop of poison in 
the blood.) 

She smoked incessantly. She ate very little. And as 
time went on she seemed to draw away from the two men 
into a kind of secret ecstasy of enjoyment like some fierce 
animal scenting freedom. The sentences she dropped 
were shallow, impatient, even stupid. And yet there was 
Rufus Cosgrave with his hungry eyes fixed on her, trapped 
by the nameless force that lay behind her triviality, her 
daring commonness. 

She rose to go at last. 

“And you take him with you. Monsieur le docteur. If 
’e sit many more nights in ze front row ’e find out, too, 
I can’t dance, and then I break my ’eart. Besides, I ’ave 
my reputation to think of in this ver’ propaire England, 
heinr 

“I’m coming with you,” Cosgrave said quietly. 

She shrugged her shoulder. 

“E/i hien, what can I do? They are all ze same. 
Good-bye, Monsieur le docteur. You scare me stiff. But 
1 1 like you. Next time I ’ave ze tummy-ache I ring you 
up.” 

“I shouldn’t — if I were you.” 

“Why? You give me poison, p’raps?” 

“I might,” he said. 


n 


§1 

QO Rufus Cosgrave disappeared, like an insignificant 
^ chip of wood sucked into a whirlpool, and this time 
Stonehouse made no attempt to plunge in after him. With 
other advanced and energetic men of his profession he 
stood committed to a new enterprise — the creation of a 
private hospital, which was to be a model to the hospitals 
of the world — and he had no time to waste on a fool who 
wanted to ruin himself. But though he never thought of 
Cosgrave, he could not altogether forget him. At night 
he found himself turning instinctively towards the window 
where the delicate, rather plaintive profile had shown 
faintly against the glow of the streets, and the empty 
frame caused him a sense of unrest, almost of insecurity, 
as though a ghost had risen to convince him that the dead 
are never quite dead, and then had vanished. 

He took to returning to his consulting- rooms, where 
he regained his balance and his normal outlook. The 
sober reality of the place thrust ghosts out-of-doors. 
Here was no lingering shadow of poverty to recall them. 
The bright, cold instruments in their glass cases, the 
neatly ordered japanned tables, the cunning array of 
lights were there to remind him that he was a man who 
had made a record career for himself and who was going 
farther. In the day-time he took them as a matter of 
course, but now he regarded them rather solemnly. He, 
went from one to another, handling them, testing them, 
switching the lights of special electrical devices on and off, 
like a boy with a new and serious plaything. There was 
no one to laugh at him, and he did not laugh at himself. 
He stood in the midst of his possessions, a little insolently, 

204 I 


THE DARK HOUSE 


205 


with his head up, as though he were calling them up one 
by one to bear him witness. He was self-made. He had 
torn his life out of the teeth of circumstance. There was 
not an instrument, not a chair or table in the lofty, digni- 
fied room that he had not paid for with sweat and sacrifice 
and deprivation. No one had given him help that he had 
not earned. Even in himself he had been handicapped. 
The boy he had been had wanted things terribly — silly, 
useless, gaudy things that would have ruined him as they 
had ruined his father. He remembered how in the twi- 
light of Acacia Grove he had listened to the music of far- 
off processions, and had longed to run to meet them and 
march with the jolly, singing people, and how once it had 
all come true, and he had lied and stolen. 

Once only. Then he had stamped temptation under 
foot. He had become master of himself. And now he 
was not tempted any more by foolish desires. He meant 
to do work that would put Ixim in the front rank of big 
men. 

And, thinking_of the old struggle, he threw out his 
hand, as he had done that night when he had met Francey 
Wilmot, and clenched the slender, powerful fingers as 
though he had life by the throat, smiling a little in the 
cold, rather cruel way that Cosgrave knew — a theatrical 
gesture, had it been less passionately sincere. 

It was*in his consulting-room that Cosgrave found him 
after a prolonged, muddle-headed search that had lasted 
till close on midnight. Cosgrave himself was drunk — less 
with wine than with a kind of heady exhilaration that 
made him in turn maudlingly sentimental or recklessly 
hilarious. And yet there was a definite and serious pur- 
pose in his coming — a rather pathetic desire to ‘‘put him- 
self right,” to get Stonehouse, who leant against the 
mantleshelf watching him with a frank contempt, to 
understand and sympathise. 

“Of course — you’re mad with me — you’ve got every 
right to be — it was a rotten thing to do — bolting like that 


206 


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— ^beastly ungrateful and inconsiderate. It was just be- 
cause I couldn’t explain. I knew you thought it was» the 
fresh air and — and hunting down those poor jolly little 
beggars — and all the time it was just a girl and a blessed 
tune running through my head.” 

He began to hum, beating time with tipsy solemnity, 
and even then the wretched song brought something riot- 
ous and headlong into the subdued room. 

The door seemed to have been flung violently open with 
an explosive gesture, as though some invisible showman 
had called out: “Look who’s here!” and the woman her- 
self had Catherine-wheeled into their midst, standing there 
in her exotic gorgeousness, with her arms spread out in 
salutation and her mouth parted in that rather simple 
smile. Robert could almost smell the faint perfume that 
surrounded her like a cloud. It was ridiculous — yet for 
the moment she was so real, that he could have taken her 
by the shoulders and thrust her out. 

“And you did want me to get better, didn’t you.^” Cos- 
grave pleaded wistfully, “even if it wasn’t with your medi- 
cine. And in a sort of way it was your medicine, wasn’t 
it.? You made me go to see her.” 

Stonehouse had to sit down and pretend to rearrange 
his papers in order to hide how impatient he felt. 

“My professional vanity isn’t wounded, if that’s what 
you’re getting at. If you were better I’d be very glad. 
As far as I can see you’re only drunk.” 

“I know — a little — I’m not accustomed to it — but it’s 
not that, Robert. Really, it isn’t. I’m jolly all — the 
time — even in the early morning. Seem to have come back 
to life from a beastly long way off — all at once — ^by spe- 
cial aeroplane. I don’t think I’ve felt like this since — 
since ” 

“Since Connie Edwards’ day,” Robert suggested. “But 
I expect you’ve forgotten her.” 

Cosgrave stared, round-eyed and open-mouthed and 
foolish. 

“Connie ? No — I haven’t. You bet I haven’t. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


207 


Often wonder what became of her. She was a jolly good 
sort.” 

“You didn’t think so by the time she’d finished with 
you.” 

“I was an ass. A giddy, hysterical ass. I didn’t 
understand. Poor old Connie ! She could just swim for 
herself — ^but not for both of us. And I scared her stiff — 
tying myself round her neck like that.” 

Stonehouse cut him short. 

“Nobody could accuse Mademoiselle Labelle of being 
a poor swimmer,” he said. (He wondered at the same 
moment whether there was something wrong with him. He 
was so intently conscious of her. He could see her loung- 
ing idly in the big chair opposite, so damnably sure of 
herself and amused. He wanted to insult and, if possible, 
hurt*her.) 

“You’re awfully down on people, Robert. Hard on 
’em. Often wonder why you haven’t chucked me off long 
ago. But that’s an old story. You ought to like her 
for being able to swim well. It’s what you do yourself.” 

“I don’t mind her swimming weU,” Robert returned. 
“But I understand that she’s been able to drown quite a 
number of people better able to look after themselves than 
you are. As far as you’re concerned, it seems — rather 
a pity.” 

Cosgrave shook his head. A certain quiet obstinacy, 
not altogether that of intoxication, came into his flushed 
face. And yet he looked sorry and almost ashamed. 

“I’m not going to drown. You know — I hate stand- 
ing out against you, Robert. You’ve been so — so jolly 
decent to me — and I believe in you — ^more than in any- 
thing in the world. Always have done. If you said ‘the 
earth’s square,’ I’d say, ‘Why, yes, so it is — old chap!’ 
But this — this is different — it’s like a dog eating grass 
— a sort of instinct.” 

“Instinct!” Robert echoed ironically. “If you knew 

where most instincts lead to ” He stopped, and then 

went on in a cold, matter-of-fact tone, as though he were 


208 


THE DARK HOUSE 


diagnosing a disease. “It^s not my business — ^but since 
you’ve come here I’d be interested to hear what you think 
is going to be the end of it all. I might persuade you to 
look facts in the face. By position you’re a little sub- 
urban nobody, who was pushed out to West Africa to 
become a third-rate little trader. You’ve survived, and 
you’ve got a little money to bum. To you it seems a 
fortune. But it won’t pay this woman’s cigarette bills. 
She makes you ridiculous.” 

“I am ridiculous,” Cosgrave interrupted patiently. ‘‘I 
always have been, you know. I expect I always shall be. 
I’m the square peg in the round hole — and that’s always 
comic. But she doesn’t laugh at me. She’s just let me 
join in like a good sport. I know I’m out of place, too, 
among her smart pals — you needn’t rub it in — but she 
doesn’t seem to make any difference, I might be the smart- 
est of the lot. I tell you, when I think of the good times 
I’ve had, I feel — I feel” — absurd and dmnken tears came 
into his eyes — “as though I were in church — I’m so 
awfully grateful.” 

“Her smart pals pay pretty dearly for their good 
times. It will be time to be grateful when she’s had 
enough of you.” It escaped him against his will. He 
knew the futility of such taunts which seemed to betray 
an anger too senseless to be admitted. He did not care 
enough to be angry. 

“You — you don’t understand, old chap. Seems cheek 
— my saying that to you. But you’re not like other 
people — you don’t need the things they have to have to 
keep going. And, anyhow, she’s not responsible for the 
asses men make of themselves.” He was becoming more 
fuddled as the warmth of the room closed over his wine- 
heated brain. But his eyes had changed. They had nar- 
rowed to two twinkling slits of gay secretiveness. “More 
things in heaven and earth than you dream of, old chap. 
But you don’t dream, do you.? Never did. Got your 
teeth into facts — diseases — ^and getting on — and aU that. 
What’s a song and a dance to you.? But I wish you liked 


THE DARK HOUSE 


209 


her, all the same. P’raps you do, only you won’t own up. 
She liked you, you know. Fact is, it was she sent me 
along to dig you out.” 

At that Stonehouse was caught up sharply out of his 
indifference. He flushed and thrust his hands into his 
pockets to prevent them from clenching themselves in 
absurd resentment. 

“What do you mean?” 

Cosgrave nodded. But he looked suddenly confused 
and rather sulky, like a play-tired child who has been 
shaken out of its sleep to be cross-examined. 

“Well — some people would be jolly flattered. There’s 
to be a big beano on her birthday — a supper party behind 
the scenes — and she said : ‘ You bring along your nice, sad, 
little friend — ce pawvre jetme Jiomme.* You know, 
Stonehouse, it made me laugh, her describing you like 
that. I said: ‘You don’t need to be sorry for Robert 
Stonehouse. He can keep his own end up as well as any- 
body.’ But she said: ‘Ce pauvre jeume homme.* I 
couldn’t get her to see you were a damned lucky fellow. 
He dropped back into the comer of the chesterfield and 
yawned and stretched himself. “I want you to come too. 
Do you good. P’raps she’s right. P’raps you’ve had 
a rotten time in your own way. Though I don’t know — 
I’d be happy enough if I were you — always seem to come 
out on top — not to care for any damn thing on earth, 
except that — not even Francey Wilmot — or even me — 
just a sort of pug-dog you trailed behind on the end of 
a string — a sort of mascot.” 

He was going to sleep. He waggled his arm feebly, 
groping for Stonehouse. “Say you’ll come. I’d be 
awfully proud — show you off, you know. Always was — 
awfully proud — ^have such a pal.” 

He was the very figure of stupid intoxication as he 
lay there with his crumpled evening clothes and disordered 
hair — and yet not ugly either, but in some way innocent 
and simple. (Robert could see little Rufus Cosgrave, 
excited and tired out after the chase to the Greatest Show 


210 


THE DARK HOUSE 


in Europe, peering through the disguise of rowdy man- 
hood.) 

Stonehouse threw a rug over him, resigning himself to 
the inevitable. But when he had switched off the main 
lights he gave an involuntary glance over the suddenly 
shadowed room as though to make sure that the darkness 
had exorcised an alien and detestable presence. 

So she was sorry for him. That, at any rate, was 
amusing. Or perhaps she thought he was afraid of her 
in the obscure duel that was being fought out between 
them. 

Cosgrave caught hold of him as he passed. 

“The end of it all will be that I’ll go back to my old 
swamp and tell the fellows that I’ve had a first-rate leave. 
I’ll tell ’em about her, and they’ll sit round open-mouthed 
— thinking I’m no end of a dog — and that they’ll do the 
same next time they get a chance. They’ll be awfully 
bucked to hear there’s a good time going after all.” He 
pleaded drowsily: “Say you’ll come though, Robert. 
You’re such a brick. I’m beastly fond of you, you know.” 

Robert Stonehouse withdrew his hand sharply from 
the hot, moist clasp. (How he had run that night! As 
though the devil had been after him instead of poor 
breathless little Cosgrave with his innocent confession.) 

“Oh, I’ll come,” he said. 

§2 

After all, nothing changed very much. Grown-up 
people masqueraded. They pretended to laugh at the 
young fools they had been and were still behind the elabo- 
rate disguise of adult reasonableness and worldly wisdom. 
For Robert Stonehouse, at any rate, it was ridiculously 
the old business over again — children whose games he 
despised and could not play, despising him. 

It seemed that she had invited everyone and anyone 
whose name had come into her head, without regard for 
taste or sense, and the result, half raffish and half bril- 


THE DARK HOUSE 


211 


liant, somehow justified her. The notable and notorious 
men there, the bar-loungers whose life gave them a look 
of almost pathetic imbecility, the women of fashion and 
the too fashionable ladies of the chorus had, at least tem- 
porarily, accepted some common denominator. They 
rubbed shoulders in the stuify, dingy, green-room with an 
air of complete good-fellowship. 

Robert Stonehouse stood alone among them, for noth- 
ing in his life had prepared him to meet them. He had 
been accustomed to encounter and master significant 
hardship, not an apparently meaningless luxury and aim- 
less pleasure. He knew how to deal with men and women 
whose sufferings put them in his power or with men of 
his own profession, but these people with their enigmatic 
laughter, their Masonic greetings, almost their own lan- 
guage (which was the more troubling since it seemed his 
very own), threw him from his security. They made him 
self-conscious and self-distrustful. They might be ten 
times more worthless than he believed them to be, and he 
might be ten times a bigger man, than the Robert Stone- 
house who had made such a good thing of his life. They 
had still the power to put him in the wrong and to make 
him an oaf and an outsider. And they knew it. He felt 
their glances slide over him furtively and a little mock- 
ingly. Yet outwardly he conformed to them. He wore 
his clothes well enough, and his self-control covered over 
his real distress with a rather repellent arrogance. He 
was even handsome, as a plain man can become handsome 
whose mind has dominated from the start over a fine body. 
And with this air of power went his flagrant youthfulness. 

But the girl standing next him dropped him a flippant 
question with veiled irony and dislike in her stupid eyes, 
and turned away from him before he answered. She was 
a vulgar, garish little creature, and he could afford to 
smile satirically (and perhaps too consciously) at the 
powdered shoulder which she jerked up at him. And yet 
he was deeply, miserably shamed. 

It was like a play in which he was the only one who did 


212 


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not know his part. Even Cosgrave played up — a little 
too triumphantly, showing off — as a tried man-of-the- 
world. And at her given moment the star performer 
made a dramatic entry into the midst of them, a cloak of 
pale blue brocade thrown over her scanty dress and her 
plumes still tossing from the elaborately tousled head. 

They greeted her with hand-clapping and laughter, and 
she held out her thin arms, embracing them as old friends. 
In her attitude and in her eyes which passed rapidly from 
one to another, there was good-humoured understanding. 
She knew probably what the more immaculate among them 
thought of her, and that they were there to boast about 
it as English people boast of having visited Montmartre 
at midnight. It was daring and amusing to be at this 
woman’s notorious dinners. They thought they patron- 
ized her, whatever else they knew. But in reality the j oke 
was on her side. 

Allans — to ze feast, friends.” 

She had seen Robert Stonehouse, and she went straight 
to him, waving the rest aside like a flock of importunate 
pigeons, and took his arm. “You and I lead the way. 
Monsieur le docteur** 

He did not answer. He was glad that she had sig- 
nalled him out. It smoothed his raw pride. And yet he 
thought : “This is her way of making fun of me.” And he 
hated her and the scented warmth of her slim body as it 
brushed lightly against his. He hated his own excited 
triumph. For the first time he became aware of some- 
thing definitely abnormal in himself, as though a dead skin 
had been stripped off his senses and he had begun to see 
and hear with a primitive and stupefying clearness. 

The rest followed them noisily along grimy, winding 
passages and between dusty wedges of improbable land- 
scapes out on to the stage. A long table had been laid 
in the midst of the stereotyped drawing-room, which 
formed the scene of her grotesque dancing, and absurdly 
elaborate waiters in powdered hair and knee-breeches hov- 
ered in the wings. They were not real waiters, and from 


THE DARK HOUSE 


213 


the moment they came out into the footlights the guests 
themselves became the chorus of a musical comedy. It 
was difficult to believe in the over-abundant flowers with 
which the table was strewn or in the champagne lying 
ostentatiously in wait. 

The curtain had been left up, and the dim and dingy 
auditorium gaped dismally at them. The empty seats 
were threatening as a silent, starving mob pressed against 
the windows of a feasting-house. But the woman on 
Stonehouse’s arm waved to them. 

“I like it so. I see all my friends there — my old friends 
who are gone — God knows where. They sit and laugh 
and clap and nod to one another. They say: ^Voyons, 
our Gyp still ’aving a good time.’ And I kiss my ’and to 
them all.” 

She kissed her hand and threw her head back in the 
familiar movement as though she waited for their ap- 
plause. And when it was over she looked up into Robert 
Stonehouse’s face. 

‘^Monsieur le docteur is a leetle pale. One is always 
nervous at one’s debut. You never act before, hein?^* 

“Not in a theatre like this,” he said. 

And he felt a momentary satisfaction because she knew 
that his answer had a meaning which she did not under- 
stand. 

She persisted. 

“Monsieur Cosgrave say you would not come. ’E say 
you never do nothing — only work and work. Is that 
true.?” 

“Yes.” 

“Don’t dance — don’t go to the theatre — don’t love no 
one — don’t get a leetle drunk sometimes.? Never, never?” 

“No,” he said scornfully. 

“Don’t want to, Jieinf'* 

“I hate that sort of thing.” 

(But she was making him into a ridiculous prig. She 
turned the values of life topsy-turvy with that one ironic, 
good-natured gesture.) 


214 


THE DARK HOUSE 


^'Eh, hien, it’s a good thing for my sort there are not 
too many of your sort, my friend. But per’aps it is not 
quite so bad as it seems. For you ’ave come after all.” 

“I had to,” he thrust at her. 

‘‘ ’Ow you say — ^professionally.^” 

“Yes.” 

“But I ’ave not get ze tummy-ache — not yet.” 

“I don’t care about you.” 

“You want to look after your leetle friend, heinf^* 

“Yes.” 

She was unruffled — even concerned to satisfy him. 

“Well, then, you be policeman. You sit ’ere. It is 
always better to watch ze thief than ze coff re-fort. You 
keep an eye on me and see I don’t run away with ’im. 
Voyons, mesdames et messieurs y our friend ’ere ’ave the 
place of honour. ’E sit next me and see I be’ave nice. 
’E don’t like me ver’ much. ’E think me a bad woman.” 

They laughed with her and at him. He felt himself 
colour up and try to laugh back. (And it was oddly like 
his attempt to propitiate Form I when it had gibed him 
on that bitter pilgrimage from desk to desk.) He took 
his place at her right hand. He could see Cosgrave half- 
way down the table, and his thin, freckled face with its 
look of absurd happiness. He was unselfishly overjoyed 
that his friend should have been thus signalled out for 
honour. Perhaps he harboured some crazy certainty that 
after this Stonehouse would understand and even share his 
infatuation. He caught Robert’s eye and smiled and 
nodded triumphantly. 

“Now you see what she’s really like, don’t you.^” 

A string band, hidden in the orchestra under a roof 
of palms, played the first bars of her dance, and then 
stopped short and waited solemnly. She still stood, glass 
in hand. 

“It is my birthday. God and I alone know which one. 
I drink to myself. I wish myself good luck. Vive my- 
self. Vive Gyp Labelle and all who ’ave loved ’er and 
love ’er and shall love ’er !” 


THE DARK HOUSE 


215 


She drank her wine to the last drop, and the band began 
to play again, knitting the broken, noisy congratulations 
into a kind of triumphal chorus. It was very crude and 
theatrical and effective. It did not matter, any more 
than it matters in a well-acted play, that the whole inci- 
dent had been rehearsed. It was as calculated and as 
spontaneous as that nightly, irresistible burst of laughter. 

Rufus Cosgrave stood up shyly in his place. Had he 
been dressed a shade less perfectly and resisted the gar- 
denia in his button-hole, he would have been better dis- 
guised. As it was, there could be no mistaking a little 
fellow from the suburbs who had got into bad company. 
And in spite of the West Africa swamp and its peculiar 
forms of despairing vice, he was so frightfully innocent 
that he did not know it. 

‘‘And — and we’re here to — to wish you luck too — that 
you go on — as you are — dancing and laughing — making 
us all laugh and dance with you — however down in the 
dumps we are — for ever and ever — and to bring you offer- 
ings — for you to remember us by.” 

There must have been a great deal more to it than that. 
Stonehouse could see the notes clenched in one tense hand, 
but they had become indecipherable and he let them drop. 
He came from his place, stumbling over the back of some- 
body’s chair, to where she stood, and laid a small square 
box done up in tissue paper at her side. She laughed and 
caught him by the ear, and kissed him on both flaming 
cheeks. 

“A precedent — fair play for all!” the man opposite 
Stonehouse shouted. 

They came then, one after another, treading on each 
other’s heels, and she waited for them, an audacious figure 
of Pleasure receiving custom, and kissed them, shading 
her kiss subtly so that each one became a secret little 
joke out of the past or lying in wait in the future, at 
which the rest could guess as they chose. Some of the 
women whom she knew best joined in the stream. They 
bore her, for the most part, an odd affinity and no ill-will. 


216 


THE DARK HOUSE 


They had set out on the same road and had failed, and 
their failure stared out of their crudely painted faces. 
But perhaps they were grateful to her for not having for- 
gotten them — or for other more obscure reasons. They 
gave her what they could — extemporary gifts some of 
them — a tawdry ring or a flower which she stuck jauntily 
among the outrageous feathers. The significantly small 
parcels she did not open — either from idle good nature 
or from sheer indifference, Stonehouse wondered what 
Cosgrave’s little box contained. Probably a year or two 
of the mosquito-infested swamp to which he would soon 
return to boast of this night’s extravaganza. 

“And you, Monsieur le docteur?** 

For he had gone on eating and drinking with apparent 
tranquillity. 

“Oh, I have nothing — nothing but admiration,” he said 
smiling. 

She shook her head. 

“Ca ne va pas. The chief guest. Ah, no! That is 
not kind. A birthday — c^est une chose hien serieuse, 
vopons. Who knows Per’aps you never ’ave another 
chance — and then you ’ave remorse — ’orrible, terrible 
remorse. Or do you never ’ave remorse either. Monsieur 
le docteur?’' 

“No — not yet.” 

“You must not run ze risk, then.” 

He thought savagely. 

“If I had a diamond stud she would make me give it 
her.” 

He took a shilling from his pocket and laid it gravely 
in the midst of her trophies. 

“Is that enough 

And then before he could draw back she had kissed 
him between the eyes. 

Quite, then. I keep it for a mascot, and you will 
remember to-morrow morning, when you are ver’ grave 
and important with some poor frightened patient, that 
Gyp Labelle kiss you last night, and that you are not 


THE DARK HOUSE 


217 


different from ze others, after all. And I will take my 
shilling from under my pillow, and say : ‘Poor Gyp, that’s 
what you’re worth, my friend !’ ” 

“He doesn’t know you yet.” 

Robert Stonehouse looked up sharply. The interrup- 
tion had started a new train of thought. Beyond the 
flushed face of the man opposite him, he could see the 
empty stalls, row after row of gaunt-ribbed and feature- 
less spectators, watching him. The play had become a 
nightmare farce in which he had chosen a ludicrous, impos- 
sible part. But he had to go on now. 

“Except for Cosgrave there, I’ve known Mademoiselle 
Labelle longer than any of you. I’ve known her ever since 
I was a boy.” 

He felt rather than saw their expressions change. She 
too stared with an arrested interest, but he looked away 
from her to Cosgrave, smiling ironically. If it humiliated 
her and made her ridiculous too — well, that was what he 
wanted. He wanted to pay her back — most of all for the 
excitement boiling in him — the sense of having been top- 
pled out of his serenity into a torrent of noise and colour 
by that audacious touch of her lips upon his face. And 
there was Cosgrave — and then again some older score to 
be paid off — something far off and indistinct that would 
presently come clear. 

“Don’t you remember, Rufus 

“Rather. But I know you a minute longer. Mademoi- 
selle. I saw you before he did.” 

“That was because Mademoiselle Moretti rode first.” 

“Ah — the Circus !” She threw her head back, drawing 
a deep breath through her nostrils as though she savoured 
some long-lost perfume blown in upon her by a sudden 
Vvind. “Now I remember too. Ze good Moretti. She 
ride old Arabesque. ’E ’ave white spots all over ’im — 
on ’is chest and what you call ’is paws, and every evening 
she ’ave to paint ’im like she paint ’er face. Madame Mo- 
retti — that was a good sort — bonne enfant — what you 
say.?^ — domestic — not really of ze Circus at all. She like 


218 


THE DARK HOUSE 


to wash up and cook leetle honnes-houches for supper. 
She was a German — Fredechen we call ’er — and she could 
make Sauerkraut — eh biejit I — moi qm vous parle — une 
bonne Frangaise — I make myself sick with ’er Sauerkraut. 
Afterwards she grow too stout and marry ze proprietaire 
of what you call it? — a public-^ouse — ‘Ze Crown and Gar- 
ter’ at some town where we stop a week. By now, I think 
she ’ave many children and a chin for each.” 

Cosgrave laughed noisily. 

“Didn’t I tell you, Robert? A barmaid!” 

“Yes — you had better taste.” But he was hot with 
anger. “And then you came at her heels. Mademoiselle. 
You rode — what was it — a donkey, a fat pony? I forget 
which. Perhaps I was thinking too much of Madame 
Moretti. But I remember you were dressed as a page 
and wore coloured tights that didn’t fit very well, and 
that everybody laughed because of your thin long legs. 
And you threw kisses to us — even Cosgrave got one, didn’t 
you, Cosgrave? And then I’m afraid I forgot you alto- 
gether. You see, there were camels and elephants and 
a legless Wonder and I don’t know what, and it was my 
first circus.” 

“It must ’ave been a donkey,” she said, narrowing her 
eyes. “I ’ave ridden so many donkeys.” 

He saw then that she did not mind at all the fact that 
she had once been a circus-clown. Rather he had tossed 
her a memory on which she feasted joyfully, almost greed- 
ily. She pushed her plate and glass away from her, and 
sat with her face between her hands. 

“Well — I ’ave ’ad good times always — ^but per’aps they 
were ze best of all. Ah, ze good old Circus — ze jolly life 
— one big family — monkeys and bears and camels and ele- 
phants and we poor ’umans, all shapes and sizes, long legs 
and short legs and no legs — loving and quarrelling — good 
friends always — Monsieur George with ’is big whip and 
’is silly soft ’eart — ze gay dinners after we ’ave ’ad full 
’ouse and ze no dinners at all when things go bad — and 
then ze journeys from town to town — sometimes it rain 


THE DARK HOUSE 


219 


all day and sometimes it is so hot and the dust rise up and 
smother us. But always when we come near ze town we 
brighten up, we pretend we are not tired at all. We make 
jokes and wonder what it will be like ’ere. Always new 
faces — new streets — new policemen — and always ze same 
too — ze long procession and ze torchlights and ze music 
and ze people running like leetle streams down ze side 
streets to join up and march along — ze leetle boys and 
girls with bright eyes — shouting and waving, so glad to 
see us.” 

It was not much that she said, and she did not say it 
to them. She disregarded them all, and yet by some 
magic, through the medium of the jerky, empty sentences 
she made them see the vulgar, gaudy thing as she was see- 
ing it. The subdued music, the tinkling of plates and 
glasses, they themselves made a background for her swift 
picture. They watched it — the old third-rate circus — 
trail its cheap glitter and flare and bang out of darkness 
and across the stage and into darkness again — tawdry 
and sordid, and yet kindly and gay and gallant-hearted 
too. 

Robert Stonehouse stared heavily in front of him. He 
had drunk — not much, but too much. He was not accus- 
tomed to drinking. The very austerity of his life betrayed 
him. These people too — these women — ^half-naked with 
their feverish, restless eyes — these men with their air of 
cynical and weary knowledge — were getting on his nerves. 
He wished he had not come. He wished he had not re- 
minded her of that accursed circus, for it had involved 
remembering. He had called up a little old tune that 
would not be easily forgotten, that would go on grinding 
itself round and round inside his brain, and when he had 
chased it out would come back, popping out at him, 
bringing other small, pale ghosts to bear it company. 
He could see Cosgrave and himself — the little boys with 
bright eyes — and feel the reverberations of their aston- 
ishment, their incredulous delight. For a moment they 
had held fast to the tail-end of the jolly marching proces- 


I 


220 


THE DARK HOUSE 


sion, and then it had been ripped out of their feeble hands. 
But the procession went on. It was always there, round 
the corner, with its music and fluttering lights, and if one 
was infirm of purpose like Cosgrave, or like a certain 
James Stonehouse, one ran to meet it, flung oneself into 
it, not counting the cost, lying and stealing. 

He heard her voice again and pressed his hands to his 
hot eyes like a man struggling back out of a deep sleep. 

“Where are they all now.^ Dieu sait. Monsieur 
Georges ’e die. As for me I go ’ome to ze old Folies Ber- 
geres, and for six months I wait — a leetle ugly nobody 
with long thin legs dancing with ten other ugly leetle no- 
bodies with all sorts of legs be’ind La Jolleta. You don’t 
remember ’er, heinf Ah, c’est vieux jeu pa and you are 
all too young, Mesdames et Messiemrs, She was ze pas- 
sion of your grandpapas. God knows why. Why do 
you all love me, hein? Une Mystere. Well, she was ver’ 
old then, but she ’ave ze good ’ealth and ze thick skin of 
ze rhinoceros. And some’ow no one ’ave ze ’eart to tell 
’er. It become a sort of joke — ’ow long she keep going — 
ze Boulevards make bets about it. But for me it is no 
joke. I am in a ’urry, moi, and I know I can do better 
than she did ever— I ’ave something — ’ere — ’ere — that 
she never ’ave. And so one night I put a leetle pinch of 
something that a good friend of mine give me in La Jol- 
leta’s champagne what she drink before she dance, and 
when ze call-boy come she lie there on ze sofa — ’er mouth 
open — comme <^a — snoring — like a pink elephant asleep 
— ’ow you say — squiffy — dead to ze world. Ze manager 
’e tear ’is ’air out, and then I come and show ’im and ’e 
let me go on instead because there is no one else. And the 
people boo and shriek at me, they are so angry and I 
make ze long nose at them all — and presently they laugh 
and laugh.” 

They could see her. It wouldn’t have seemed even im- 
pudent. Even then she had been too sure of herself. 

“And when I come off ze manager kiss me on both 
cheeks. Et c^etait fait.'* 


THE DARK HOUSE 


221 


They applauded joyously. Her brutal egotism was 
a good joke. They expected nothing else from her. She 
was like an animal whose cruelty and cunning one could 
observe without moral qualms. 

“It was a mean thing to have done,” Stonehouse said 
loudly and truculently — “a treacherous thing.” 

A shadow was on Cosgrave’s face. He leant towards 
her, almost pleading. 

“And La — La — what did you call her.?* La Jolleta — 
what became of her.'”’ 

She made a graphic gesture. 

“She went into the sack, little one — into the sack. She 
was old. One should go gracefully.” 

“You too,” Stonehouse said, in a savage undertone. 

“I Oh, no, jamais, jamais She lifted the mon- 

strous crest of plumage from her head and set it in the 
midst of the flowers and rumpled up her hair till she 
was like the child riding the fat pony. “You see yourself 
— I never grow old, my friend.” 

“You are older already,” he persisted. 

But the man opposite broke in again. He leant towards 
Stonehouse, his inflamed eye through the staring monocle 
fixing him with an extraordinary tipsy earnestness. 

“No, doctor, you are mis-mistaken. It would be intol- 
erable — ^you understand — quite intolerable. There are 
things that — that must not be true — as there are other 
things that must be true. We’ve staked our last penny 
on it, sir, and we’ve got to win. Mademoiselle here knows 
all about it, and she’ll play the game. A sport, doctor, 
a sport. Won’t let old friends go bankrupt — no — cer- 
tainly not.” 

They laughed at him. It seemed unlikely that he him- 
self knew what he was talking about. But he shook his 
head and remained sunk in solemn meditation, twirling the 
stem of his glass between thick, unsteady fingers. The 
girl next him nudged him disgustedly. 

“Oh, wake up! You’ll be crying in a minute. Talk 
of something else.” 


222 


THE DARK HOUSE 


“Tell us the story of the Duke and the Black Opal, 
Gyp” 

She waved them off. 

“No — no — that is not discreet. One must not tell 
tales. That might frighten someone ’ere who loves me.” 

And she looked .at Stonehouse, a little malicious and 
insolently, childishly sure. He leant towards her, speak- 
ing in an undertone, trying to stare her down. 

“Do you mean me, Mademoiselle.?” 

“And why not. Monsieur le docteur? Would it be so 
strange.? You say you love nobody. But it seems you 
love ze poor fat Moretti — terribly, terribly, no doubt, so 
that you almost break your small ’eart for ’er. And per- 
’aps someone else too. You say you don’t drink — ^but 
you are just a lee tie drunk already. You are not diifer- 
ent from ze rest. I tell you that before — and I know. I 
am a connoisseur. It is written — ’ere in the eyes and in 
the mouth. It is dangerous, the way you live. Quant d 
moi — I don’t want you, my friend — we two — that would 
be an eruption — a disaster — I should be afraid.” 

She pretended to shudder, and a moment later seemed 
to forget him altogether. She pressed her cigarette out 
on her plate and went over to the piano, touching Cos- 
grave lightly on the shoulder as she passed him. 

“Come, my latest best-beloved, we ’ave to amuse -ze com- 
pany. We sing our leetle song together.” 

But first she made a deep low bow to the shadowy the- 
atre. She kissed her fingers to the empty boxes that 
stared down at her with hollow, mournful eyes. (Were 
there ghosts there too, Stonehouse wondered bitterly? 
The unlucky Frederick, perhaps, with the fatal hole gapp- 
ing above the temple, applauding, leaning towards her!) 

She sang worse than usual. She was hoarse, and what 
voice she had gave way altogether. It did not seem to 
matter either to her or to anyone else. What she could 
not sing she danced. There was a chorus and they joined 
in filling the gloom behind them with sullen, ironic echoes. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


223 


She reduced them all, Stonehouse thought, to the cabaret 
from which she sprang. 

And it was comic to see Cosgrave with his head thrown 
back, playing the common, noisy stuff as though inspired. 

When it was over he swung round, gaping at them with 
drunken, confidential earnestness. 

“You know, when I was a kid I used to see myself — on 
a stage like this — playing the Moonlight Sonata.” 

She rumpled up his thick hair so that it stood on end 
like Loga’s flames. 

“You play my song ver’ nice. And that is much better 
than playing ze Moonlight Sonata all wrong, my leetle 
friend.” 

§3 

It was a sort of invisible catastrophe. 

No one else knew of it. In the day-time he himself 
did not believe in it — did not, at first, think of it at all. 
It had all the astonishing unreality of past pain. He 
went his way as usual, was arbitrary and cocksure with his 
patients, and looked forward to the evening when he could 
put them out of his mind altogether and give himself to 
his vital work. For the hospital had become a fact. It 
stood equipped and occupied, an unrecognized but actual 
witness to his tenacity. Other men would get the credit. 
The Committee who had appointed him consulting sur- 
geon, not without references to his unusual youth and 
their own daring break with tradition — had no suspicion 
that even the fund which, in a fit of inexplicable far-see- 
ingness they had allotted to research, had been created 
under his ceaseless pressure. And not even in his thoughts 
was he satirical at their expense. They had provided the 
money and done what he wanted and so served their pur- 
pose. Among his old colleagues he bore himself confi- 
dently but unobtrusively. He could afford to pay them 
an apparent deference. He was going farther than they 
were. His eyes were fixed on a future far beyond the 
centres of their jealousies and ambitions when he would be 


224 


THE DARK HOUSE 


freed from the wasteful struggle with petty ailments and 
petty people, and the last pretence of being concerned 
with individual life. It was a time of respite and revision. 
He was young — in his profession extraordinarily young — 
and he was able to look back, as a mountaineer looks back 
from his first peep over the weary foothills, knowing that 
the bitter drudgery is past and that before him lies the 
true and splendid adventure. 

That was in the day-time. But with the dusk, the dis- 
creet shutting of doors and the retreating steps of the 
last patient, a change came. It was like the subtle resist- 
less withdrawal of a tide — a draining away of power. He 
could do nothing against it. He could only sit motion- 
less, bowed over his papers, striving to keep a hold over 
the personality that was slipping from him. And then 
into the emptiness there flowed back slowly, painfully, a 
strange life — a stream choked and muddied at its source 
— breaking through. 

It was a physical thing. Some sort of nervous reaction. 
With the dread of that former break-down overshadowing 
him he yielded deliberately. He would leave the house and 
walk — anywhere — but always where there were people — 
down Regent Street, sweeping like a broad river into a 
fiery, restless lake. There he let go altogether, and the 
crowds carried him. He eddied with them in the glitter- 
ing backwaters of the theatres, and studied the pallid, 
jaded faces that drifted in and out of the lamp-light with 
the exaggerated attention of a mind on guard against 
itself. He hated it all. It emphasized and justified his 
aloofness from the mass of men. These people were sick 
and ugly — sicklier and uglier in their pleasure-seeking 
than in their stubborn struggle for survival, which had at 
least some elemental dignity. It was from their poisoned 
lives that women like Gyp Labelle sucked their strength. 
It was their childish perverted instincts that made her 
possible. They made the very thought of immorality a 
grisly joke. And yet their nearness, the touch of their 
ill-grown, ill-cared-for, or grossly over-nurtured bodies 


THE DARK HOUSE 


225 


against his, the sound of their nasal strident voices 
brought him relief. He could not shake off their fascina- 
tion for him. He was like a man hanging round the scene 
of some conquered, unforgotten vice. 

It was one dismal November evening that, turning aim- 
lessly into a Soho side-street, he came upon an old man 
who stood on a soap-box under a lamp and preached. He 
held a Bible to the light and read from it, and at intervals 
leant forward and beat the tattered book with his open 
hand. 

“You hear that, men and women. This is the liar, the 
tyrant, the self-confessed devil whom you have worshipped 
from the beginning of your creation. You see for your- 
selves the sort of beast he is. There isn’t a brute amongst 
us who would do the things he’s done. He’s made you 
fight and kill and torture each other for his sake. And 
all down the ages he has laughed at you — he is laughing 
now because, after all — ^he knows the truth — he knows 
what I tell you here night after night” — and Mr. Ricardo 
leant forward and pointed a long, dirty finger at the dark- 
ness — “that he doesn’t exist — that he is a dream — a myth 
— a hope ” 

Someone cheered — perhaps because the last words had 
a sound of eloquent conclusion — and Mr. Ricardo nodded 
and took breath. He was like a scarecrow image that 
had been stuck up by a freakish joker in a London street. 
The respectability that still clung to him made him the 
more ludicrous. His clothes were the ruined cast-offs of 
a middle-class tradesman, and over them he wore his old 
master’s gown. It did not flutter out behind now, but lay 
dank and heavy along his sides like the wings of a shot 
bird. 

Robert Stonehouse stood back against the shuttered 
windows of a shop and stared at him. The sea, rushing 
out in some monstrous tidal wave had left its floor littered 
with old wreckage, with dead, forgotten people who stirred 
and lifted themselves. A grotesque, private resurrec- 
tion. . . . 


226 


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The crowd around Mr. Ricardo listened in silence, not 
mocking him. There were wide-eyed, haunted-looking 
children, and men and women not quite sober who drifted 
out from the public-houses to gape heavily at this cheaper 
form of entertainment. Possibly they thought he was 
some missionary trying to induce them to sign the pledge. 
Some of them must have known that he was mad. But 
even they did not laugh at him. Into their own dark and 
formless thoughts there may have come the dim realiza- 
tion that they, too, were misshapen and outcast. The 
rain falling in long, slanting lines through the dingy lamp- 
light seemed to merge them into a mournful kinship. 

He spoke rapidly, and for the most part the long, in- 
volved sentences rolled themselves without meaning. But 
now and then something struggled clear — a familiar 
phrase — an ironical echo. Then Robert Stonehouse saw 
through the disfigurement to the man that had been — the 
poor maimed and shackled fighter gibing and leering at 
his fellow-prisoners. 

“And now, my delightful and learned young 
friends ” 

And yet he had stood up for little Robert Stonehouse 
in those days — had armed him, and opened doors, and 
made himself into a stepping-stone to the freedom he had 
never known. And had gone under. . . . 

“That is all for tonight, men and women. I thank you 
for your support. You may rest assured that the fight 
will go on. The end is in sight, and if need be I shall 
lead the last attack in person.’^ 

Then he stepped down from his soap-box and swung 
it on to his shoulders by means of a cord, and went limp- 
ing off in a strange and anxious haste. 

Stonehouse pushed roughly through the dispersing, 
purposeless crowd and caught up with him as he was about 
to lose himself in a dark network of little squalid streets. 
He felt oddly young and diffident, for the schoolmaster is 
always the schoolmaster though he be mad and broken. 

“Mr. Ricardo — don’t you remember me.?” 


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227 


The old man stopped and blinked up uncertainly from 
under the sodden brim of his hat. His dirty claw-like 
hands clutched his coat together in an instinctive gesture 
of concealment. He seemed disturbed and even rather 
offended at the interruption. 

“I — ah — I beg your pardon. No, I’m afraid not. It 
is — ah — not unnatural. You understand — I have too 
many supporters.” 

“Yes — yes — of course. But you knew me years ago 
when I was a boy. Don’t you remember Robert Stone- 
house.?^” 

It was evident that the name fanned some faint memory 
which flickered up for a moment and then went out. 

“You will excuse me. It is possible. I have heard the 
name. But I have long since ceased to concern myself 
with persons. In a great struggle such as this individuals 
are submerged.” 

He walked on' again, slip-slopping in his shapeless boots 
through the slush, his head down to the rain. 

“Christine,” Robert said, “don’t you remember Chris- 
tine.?” 

(He himself had not thought of her for years, and now 
deliberately he had conjured her up.) 

Mr. Ricardo hunched his shoulders. He peered round 
at Stonehouse, frowning suspiciously. 

“You are very persistent, sir. Are you God.?” 

“No.” 

“It is better to be quite frank with one another. Not 
an emissary of God.?” 

“No.” 

He seemed only half satisfied. 

“You will excuse iuy asking. I have to be very careful. 
There have been certain signs of late that the enemy is 
anxious to negotiate — to — ah — reach some compromise. 
No direct offer, you understand, but various feelers — 
hints — suggestions---terms of a most unscrupulous and 
subtle nature — traps into which a man less — ah — wary 


228 


THE DARK HOUSE 


than myself might well fall. This Christine — yes — yes 
— I have to be on my guard.” 

‘T have nothing to do with God,” Robert said gently. 
“I’m a friend — on your side. I’d like to help. If I 
knew where you lived so that I could learn more about 
your work ” 

But Mr. Ricardo shrank away from him. 

“I don’t like the sound of that. I dare say I do you 
an injustice, young man, but I can’t afford to take risks. 
My headquarters are my secret.” 

“Well” — he tried to speak in a matter-of-fact and rea- 
sonable way — “at any rate, a general must have munition. 
I’d like to help financially. You can’t refuse me that.” 

They were almost through the labyrinth of Soho and 
on the brink of Oxford Street. Mr. Ricardo stopped 
again with his hand spread out flat upon his breast in a 
gesture not without power and dignity. 

“You think I am a failure, sir, because I go poorly 
dressed. You are mistaken. In the struggle that I am 
carrying on, outward and material things are of no ac- 
count. I might have all the wealth and all the armies 
of the world, sir, and be further from victory than I am 
now. The fight is here, sir, in the spirit of man, and the 
weaker and poorer I become the nearer I am to the final 
effort. I am a fighter, sir, stripping himself — presently 
I shall throw off the last hindrance, and if the enemy will 
not show himself I shall seek him out — I shall force him 

to stand answer ” He broke off. The chain of white- 

hot coherency had snapped and left him peering about him 
vaguely, and a little anxiously, as though he were afraid 
someone had overheard him. 

“It has been very difficult — there were circumstances — 

so many circumstances ” He sighed and finished on 

the toneless parrot-note of the street orator: “My next 
meeting will be at Marble Arch, 3 p.m., on Tuesday. 
Thank you for your attention, and good-night.” 

He lifted his hat and bowed to left and right as though 
to an assembled multitude. The lamp^light threw his 


THE DARK HOUSE 


229 


shadow on to the grey, wet pavements, and with the soap- 
box perched on his shoulders it was the shadow of a huge 
hunchback. Then he shuffled off, and Stonehouse lost 
sight of him almost at once in the dripping, uncertain 
darkness. 

He walked on mechanically, aimlessly. He was tired 
out and dejected beyond measure by this tragic encounter. 
It was not any immediate affection for the old man, who 
had been no more to him than a strange force driving 
him on for its own purposes; it was the others he had 
evoked — and, above all, the sense of common misfortune 
which no man can avert for ever. For the moment he lost 
faith in his own power to maintain himself against a 
patient and faceless Nemesis. 

It was morbid — the old terrifying signs of breakdown 
— the pointing finger. 

“Thus far and no further with your brain, Robert 
Stonehouse.” 

And then, suddenly, he found that he was in a familiar 
street, and, stopping short, as though from old custom, 
to look up. There was the finest house in Harley Street 
which they were to have decorated with their brass plates. 
If it had risen straight out of the ground at the behest 
of his fancy he could not have been more painfully dis- 
concerted. He had never known before that he had 
avoided it. He knew it now, and the realization was like 
the opening of a door into a dark and unexplored chamber 
of his mind. He stood there shivering with cold, and wet, 
and weariness. Who lived there now, he wondered.? The 
old back-numbers whom they were to have ousted so ruth- 
lessly.? Well, he could find out. Someone lived there, at 
any rate. He could see a light in one of the upper rooms. 
He crossed over and went up the steps cautiously, like a 
thief. All the brass plates but one had gone. That one 
shone brightly in the lamp-light, giving the door a one- 
eyed, impish look. He could read the letters distinctly, 
and yet he had to spell them over twice. It was as though 


230 


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she herself had suddenly opened the door and spoken to 
him. 

“Frances Wilmot, 

Then he turned and walked away. But at the next 
comer he stopped and looked up again at the lighted 

window. What freakish fancy had possess'ed her ? 

Perhaps she was there now. He could see her in the 
room that had been his enemy. And he had brief vision 
of himself standing there in the empty street as he had 
done when he had loved her so desperately, gazing up 
at that signal of warmth and comfort out of the depths 
of his own desolateness. 

He said “Francey!” under his breath, ironically, as 
though he had uttered a child’s “open-sesame!” to prove 
that there had never been any magic in the word. But 
the sound hurt him. 

This, time he did not look back. 

Nor was there any reassurance to be found that night 
in the concrete justification of his life. He set himself 
down to work in vain. One ghost called up another. The 
room with its solemn, bloodless impedimenta became — 
not a monument to his success, but a Moloch, to whom 
everything had been sacrificed — the joy of life, its laugh- 
ter, its colour — and Christine. And not only Christine. 
He had been sacrificed too. 

But he saw Christine most clearly. She sat in the big 
arm-chair where his patients waited for his verdict. She 
wore the big, floppy, black hat that she had liked best, 
and the grey hair hung in the old untidy wisps about her 
face. The chair was much too big for her. Her little 
feet hardly touched the ground. Her hands in the darned 
gloves were folded gravely over the shabby bag. He could 
see her looking about dimly and hear the clear, small voice. 

“How wonderful of you, Robert! How proud your 
dear father would have been !” 

He fidgeted with the papers on his table, rearranging. 


i 


THE DARK HOUSE 


231 


re-sorting, desperately trying not to suffer. But he would 
have tom the whole place down in ruins to have remem- 
bered that he had given her one day of happiness. 

Well, there had been that one day on Francey’s hill — 
the picnic. She had liked that. The wood at the bottom, 
like a silent, deep, green pool — and Franceys’ arms about 
his shoulders, Francey’s mouth on his, giving him kiss for 
kiss. 

Ghosts everywhere — and no living soul who cared now 
whether he failed or won through, whether he suffered or 
was satisfied. Only Cosgrave perhaps — poor, unlucky 
little Cosgrave — always hunting for happiness — breaking 
himself against life — going to the dogs for the sake of a 
rotteii woman. 

He fell forward with his face hidden in his arms and 
lay there shaken by gusts of fever. They weakened grad- 
ually, and he fell asleep. And in his sleep his father drew 
himself up suddenly, showing his terrible white face, and 
clutched at little Robert Stonehouse, who skirted him and 
ran screaming down the dark stairs. 

“You can’t — you can’t — ^you’re dead. I’m grown up 
: — I’m free — I’m not like you — ^you can’t — ^you can’t ” 

But the next morning he was himself again, sure and 
cool-headed and cool-hearted. He did not believe that he 
had suffered or in the recurrence of that terror. 


m 


§1 

pROBABLY she had expected him. It must have 
^ seemed to her, so Stonehouse reflected as he followed 
the shrivelled old woman down a passage dim and gorgeous 
with an expensive and impossible Orientalism, a natural 
sequel to his enmity. Men did not hate her — or they did 
so at their peril. Then she would be most dangerous. 
The luckless Frederick, so the story ran, had snubbed her 
at a charity bazaar, and had made fun of her dancing. 
And he had stolen and finally shot himself for her sake. 
Perhaps she thought there was a sort of inevitability in 
this programme. 

He had to wonder at and even admire the mad 
splendour of the place. Her taste was as crude and 
flamboyant as herself, but it too had escaped vulgarity 
which at its worst is imitative of the best, a stupid 
second-handness, an aggressive insolent self-distrust. She 
was not ashamed of what she was. She was herself all 
through, and she trusted herself absolutely. She wanted 
colour and there was colour. She wanted Greek columns 
in a Chinese pagoda and they were there. The house 
was like a temple built by a crazy architect to a crazy 
god, and every stick and stone in it was a fanatic’s 
offering. 

The old woman jerked her head and stood aside. Her 
toil-worn face with the melancholy monkey eyes was in- 
scrutable, but Stonehouse guessed at the swift analysis 
he was undergoing. In his iron temper he could afford 
to be amused. 

“Mademoiselle is within.” 

The room was a huge square. To make it, two floors 
232 


4 


THE DARK HOUSE 


233 


at least of the respectable Kensington house must have 
been sacrificed. The walls were decorated with Egyptian 
frescoes and Chinese embroideries, and silk divans which 
might have figured in a cinema producer’s idea of a Turk- 
ish harem were set haphazard on the mosaic fioor. In 
the centre a stone fountain of the modern-primitive 
school and banked with fiowers splashed noisily. Some- 
how it offered Kensington the final insult. But she had 
wanted it, just as she had wanted the Greek columns. 
There was even a certain magnificence about the room’s 
absurdity. It was so hopelessly wrong that it attained a 
kind of perfection. 

She herself sat on the edge of the fountain and fed a 
gorgeous macaw who, from his gilded perch, received her 
offerings with a lofty friendliness. But as Stonehouse 
entered she sprang up and ran to him, feeling through 
his pockets like an excited child. 

“The poison — the poison!” she demanded. 

He had to laugh. 

“I forgot it,” he said. 

^^C*est dommage. You ’ave not taken it yourself by 
any chance.^” 

“No — ^I wouldn’t do that at any rate.” 

“CVs# vrai. I ask — you ’ave an air wn pm souffrant. 
Well, never mind. It’s droll though — I think about you 
just when you ring up — I ’ave a damn pain — not ze 
tummy-ache this time — and I say: 'Le pawvre jeune 
homme, ’ere is a chance for ’im to pay me out for kissing 
’im when ’e don’t want to be kissed.’ You remember — I 
say I send for you one day. But ze old pain — it ’as gone 
now. You — ’ow do you say.? — you conjure it away.” 

“Your pains don’t interest me,” he said. “For one 
thing I don’t believe you ever had any. I suppose you 
think a pain is the best entertainment to offer a doctor. 
It’s thoughtful of you, but I didn’t come here to be 
amused.” 

“Then I wonder what you want of me,” she remarked. 
She went back to her place on the fountain’s edge, sitting 


234 


THE DARK HOUSE 


amidst the flowers and crushing them under her hands. 
The pose appealed to him as expressively callous, and 
yet it was innocent too, the pose of a child or an animal 
who destroys without knowledge or ill-will. 

“Do people usually want things from you.'^” he asked. 

“Always — all ze time.” 

“And you give so much.” 

She eyed him seriously. 

“I give what I ’ave to give.” 

“And take what you can get.” 

“Like you. Monsieur le docteurJ" 

The absoluteness of his hatred made it possible for him 
to laugh with her. 

“My fees are fairly reasonable at any rate. I’ve helped 
some people for nothing.” 

“Because you love them.f^” 

“No.” 

“CVs# dommage aussi. You should love someone. It 
is much ’ealthier. I love everyone. Per’aps I love too 
much. I make experiments. You make experiments — 
and sometimes leetle mistakes. Comme nous autres. ‘Ze 
operation was a grand succes — but ze patient die.’ I 
know. Some of mine die too.” 

“Prince Frederick, for instance.?” 

She lifted the long chain of pearls about her neck and 
considered them dispassionately. 

“That caward.' You think ’e give me these.? Ce pauvre 
Fredi! ’E couldn’t ’ave given me a chain of pink coral. 
I could ’ave bought ’im and ’is funny little kingdom with 
my dress-money. ’E shoot ’imself. Well, that was ’is 
affaire. ’E ’ave no doubt explain ’imself to ze hon Dieu, 
who is particulaire about that sort of thing. As to ze 
old pearls — my agent ’e set that story going — pour en- 
courager les autres.'* 

“Cosgrave among them.?” he suggested. 

“Monsieur Cosgrave.? We won’t talk about ’im just 
now, if you please. ’E make me ver’ cross. I ’ate to be 
cross. It is ver’ difficult to ’ave a good time with English 


THE DARK HOUSE 


235 


people. They are so damn thorough. When they want to 
go to ze devil they want to go ze whole way.” 

“Perhaps that’s why I’m here,” he said ironically. 

^^Voyons — voyons, c^est ennuyeiuv ” She broke off 

and gave a little husky, good-natured laugh. “I remem- 
ber. You think me a bad woman. But I am not a bad 
woman at all. Ze leetle girls in ze chorus — they are 
sometimes bad because they want things they ’ave no 
right to ’ave. They are just leetle girls with nothing to 
give, and they want to live ze big life and they tumble into 
ze gutter. They are ze ginger-beer who pretend to be ze 
champagne. Mais mol — I am ze real champagne. I make 
things seem jolly that are not jolly at all — ze woman 
who sit next you at dinner — ze food — ze bills who wait 
for you at ’ome — ^life. If you take too much of me you 
’ave ze ’eadache. Enfin, ce pas ma faute, I ’ave 
so much to give. I ’ave so much life. One life — one 
country — one ’usband is not enough. But I am not bad. 
If there was any sense in things they would give me an 
order and a nice long title — Grande Mmtresse de la Vie — 
Princesse de Joie.** She lifted her eyebrows at him to 
see whether he appreciated the joke. “Ah well — ^no. I 
talk too much about myself. Tell me instead what you 
think of my leetle ’ome. C'est joli, n'cest-ce-pas?” She 
waved towards the Chinese embroideries and added, with 
a child’s absolute content: “I like it.’^ 

“I suppose you do,” he retorted. “It reminds me of 
a quaint old custom I read about somewhere. When our 
early ancestors were building a particularly important 
house they buried a few of the less important citizens alive 
under the foundations. It seemed to have a beneficial 
influence on the building process.” 

She offered him her cigarette-case. She seemed to be 
considering his remark carefully. Suddenly she laughed 
out with an unfeigned enjoyment. 

“I see. My victims, hem? You can make leetle jokes 
too. But why so ver’ serious? I’m not burying you, 
am I?” 


236 


THE DARK HOUSE 


“No. You couldn’t. And you’re not going to bury 
Cosgrave. Oh — I don’t want to waste my time and yours 
making accusations or appealing to what doesn’t exist. 

I only want to point out to your — ^your business instinct 
that Cosgrave isn’t worth burying. He’s poor and he’s 
unlucky. He won’t bring you luck or anything else. 
Much better to let him go.” 

“Let ’im go? But I want ’im to go! Yesterday I 
would not see ’im. I didn’t want to see ’im.” 

“That was a good reason. It’s all rather late in the 
day, though. Two months ago Cosgrave came to England 
with about £3000. I know, because he told me. And now 
that’s gone. You know where.” 

“I make a guess, my friend.” 

“He bought you presents — outrageous for a man in 
his position.” 

“Someone ’ave to buy them,” she explained good- 
humouredly. “I don’t ask about positions. It’s not 
polite.” 

“Now he’s at the end of his tether. He’s got to go 
back to his job. Last night he came to my rooms for the 
first time for weeks. He was — was almost mad. When 
he first came to England he was very ill. That does not 
concern you. But what may concern you is that he has 
become dangerous. He threatened to shoot you.” 

“Well, before ’e know me ’e threaten to shoot ’imself. 
Decidedly, ’e is getting better, that young man.’^ 

Her shameless, infectious laughter caught him by the 
throat. He wanted to laugh too, and then thrust her 
empty, laughing face down into the water of her comic 
fountain till she died. There were people who were better 
dead. He had said so and it was true, in spite of Francey I 
Wilmot and her childish sentimentality. Suddenly the 
woman in the hospital and this riotous houri were 
definitely merged into one composite figure of a mindless i 
greed and viciousness. He clenched his hands behind his i 
back, hiding them. 

“If you would only sit down we should talk so much 


THE DARK HOUSE 


237 


’appier,” she said regretfully, “You seem so far off — so 
’igh up. Please sit down.” 

“I don’t want to.” 

“Because you’re afraid we might get jolly together, 
hein? Well, you stand up there then, and tell me some- 
thing. Tell me. You don’t love nobody. You are a 
very big, ’ard young man, who ’ave made ’is way in ze 
world and know ’ow rotten everybody else is. You ’ave 
’ad ’ard times and ’ard times is ver’ bad for everyone, 
except per’aps Jesus Christ, for either they go under and 
are broken, un’appy people, or they come out on top, 
and then zey are ’arder than anyone else. Well, you are 
ze big, ’ard young man. But you run after this leetle 
Monsieur Rufus as though ’e was your baby brother. 
Well — ’e is a nice leetle fellow — ^but ’e is just a leetle fellow 
— with a soft ’eart and a soft ’ead. Not your sort. And, 
you’re not ’is sort. ’E’s frightened of you. ’E want 
someone who pat ’is ’ead and let ’im cry on ’is shoulder. 
You can’t ’elp ’im — and you fuss over ’im — ^you come ’ere 
and try to put ’is ’eart affaires in order and it’s no use at 
all. C'est ridicule, enfin,'* 

He looked away from her, so that she should not see 
that this time she had struck home. She had knocked the 
weapon out of his hand, and for the moment, in his 
astonishment and pain, he could not even hate her. It 
was true. He couldn’t help Cosgrave any more. His 
strength and ability were, as she said, of no use. That 
was what Cosgrave had meant when he had laughed 
about the adenoids. He had failed Cosgrave from the 
moment that Cosgrave had demanded love for himself 
and human tenderness. He had no tenderness to give. He 
was a hard young man. He said slowly, and with a 
curious humility: 

“I used to back him up when he was a kid. He trusted 
jjie too — and it’s got to be a sort of habit. I want him 
to be happy.” 

“Because you are so un’appy yourself?” 

“I’m all right,” he said stubbornly. And then he 


238 


THE DARK HOUSE 


added, still not looking at her. “Please give him up — so 
— so that he won’t break his heart over it. I’m not a rich 
man either, but I’ll make it worth your while.” 

She sprang up with a gesture of amused exasperation. 

’Ow stupider you are, my clever friend. You are like 
2e old father in ze Dame (mx Camellias. You make me 
quite cross. This Rufus — I can’t give ’im up. ’E don’t 
belong to me. I never ask for ’im. ’E come into my 
dressing-room and I like ’im for ’is cheek and I give ’im a 
good time. Now he is ennupeax, ’E want to marry me 
and make an honest woman of me.” She patted Stone- 
house on the shoulder with so droll a grimace that he bit 
his lip to avoid a gust of ribald, incredible laughter. It 
was as though by some trick she changed the whole aspect j 
of things so that they became simply comic — scenes in a 
jolly, improper French farce. “And now I ’ope you ' 
see ’ow funny that is. And please take Monsieur Cos- 
grave away and keep ’im away. I don’t ask no better.” 

His anger revived against her. And it was a thing 
apart from Cosgrave altogether — a bitter personal anger. 

“It can’t be done like that. You can’t take drugs away | 
from a drug-fiend at one swoop. Let him down gently — 
treat him as a friend until he has to go — get him to see 
reason.” | 

“No,” she said. “You don’t understand. You ’ave j 
not ’ad my experience. If I let ’im ’ang on ’e get s 
much worse. If I push ’im off — poof ! — an ex- | 
plosion! Then ’e find a nice leetle girl who is not like j 
me at all and marry — ver’ respectable — and ’ave ’eaps | 
of babies. That is what ’e want. But it is not my j 
affaire — and I won’t be bothered. I tell you ’e is too | 
emmyeux ” 

He lashed out at her. | 

— and too poor. My God, you’re no better than a 
woman of the streets.” 

She assented with a certain gravity. 

**C"est hien vrai, ga — hien vrai. I was bom in ze gutter ^ 
— I crawl out of ze gutter by myself. I keep out of ze 


THE DARK HOUSE 


239 


gutter always. And I don’t cry and wring my ’ands 
when people try to kick me back again. I kick them. I 
look after myself. Monsieur Cosgrave — and all those 
others — they must look after themselves too. Do you 
think they bother about me if I become envmyeuse — ^like 
them — and cry because they don’t love me and like some 
leetle girl in ze chorus better? Not they. They want fun 
and life from me — and I give them that. When they want 
more they can — ’ow you say.? — get out?” 

He stared at her in white-hot detestation. 

“I see. I’ve just wasted my time. You’re — ^you’re as 
infamous as they say. You’re taking everything he has, 
and now he can go and hang himself. You’re worse than 
a woman of the streets because you’re more clever.” 

She kissed her fingers at him in good-humoured farewell. 

“I like you ver’ much — quand meine^^ she said. “Next 
time I come and call on you, per’aps !” 

§2 

That same night Cosgrave, frustrated at the theatre, 
tried to force an entrance to the Kensington house, and 
the old woman, seconded by a Japanese man-servant, 
flung him out again and into the arms of a policeman who 
promptly arrested him. Stonehouse went bail for him, 
and there was a strange, frantic scene in his own rooms. 

For this was not the gentle young man who had met 
Connie Edwards’ infidelity with an apathetic resignation. 
He was violent and indignant. His sense of outrage was a 
sort of intoxication which gave an extraordinary force- 
fulness to his whole bearing. He stormed and threatened 
— the misery that stared out of his haggard blue eyes 
shrivelling in the heat of an almost animal fury. (And 
yet he stammered too — which was comically what the 
other Rufus Cosgrave would have done.) 

“I — I love her. I’ve never loved anyone else. That 
Connie business — a b-boy and girl affair — a silly flirtation 
— this — the real thing. I — I’m a m-man now. N-no one’s 


240 


THE DARK HOUSE 


going to play fast and loose with me. No, by God ! I’ll 
see her — she’s got to have it out with me. I’ve a right to 
an explanation at least — and by God I’ll have one !” 

“For what?” Stonehouse asked. 

“She loved me,” Cosgrave retorted. 

“I don’t believe it.” 

“You d-don’t believe it? W-what do you know about 
it? Didn’t she behave as though she did? Didn’t she go 
about with me? Didn’t she take things from me — no 
decent woman would have taken unless she loved me?” 

“She doesn’t happen to be a decent woman,” Stone- 
house observed. “To do her justice she doesn’t pretend | 
to be one.” , 

Cosgrave advanced upon him as though he would have ' 
struck him across the face. But he stopped in time, not 
from remorse, but as though pulled up by a revelation of 
maddening absurdity. 

“Oh, you — you! You don’t understand. You aren’t ' 
capable of understanding. You’re a block — a machine— 
you don’t feel — you g-go about — rolling over p-people 
and things like — ^like a damned steam-roUer. You’re not | 
a man at all. You don’t love anyone — not even yourself. 
What do you know about anything?” | 

He was grotesque in his scorn, and yet Stonehouse, I 
leaning with an apparent negligence against the mantel- ' 
shelf, felt himself go dead white under the attack. He had 
lost Cosgrave. And he knew now that he needed him 
desperately — more now than even in his desolate child- 
hood — that unconsciously he had hugged the knowledge 
of that boyish affection and dependence to him with a 
secret pride as a talisman against he hardly knew what — 
utter isolation, a terrifying hardness. He made up his 
mind to have done now with reserve, to show before it was 
too late at least some of that dwarfed and suffocated feel- 
ing. But he faltered over his first sentence. He had 
trained himself too long and too carefully to speak with 
that cold, ironic inflexion. He sounded in his own ears 
formal — unconvincing. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


241 


“You’re wrong. I do care. I care for you. You’re 
my friend. I do understand, in part, at any rate. I can 
prove it. When I saw how unhappy you were I went to 
her — I tried to reason with her.” 

He broke off altogether under the amazed stare that 
greeted this statement. The next instant Cosgrave had 
tossed his hands to heaven, shouting with a ribald 
laughter : 

“Oh, my Heaven — you poor fish! You think you can 
cure everything. I can imagine what you said : T suggest. 
Mademoiselle, that you reduce the doses gradually.’ ” 

^ It was so nearly what he had said that Stonehouse 
flinched, and suddenly Cosgrave seemed to feel an im- 
patient compassion for him. “Oh, I’m a beast. It was 
jolly decent of you. You meant well. But you can’t 
help.” 

And that was what she had said. Stonehouse made no 
answer. He saw himself as ridiculous and futile. He 
was sick with disgust at his own pain. If he had lost 
Cosgrave he wanted to have done with the whole business 
now — quickly and once and for all. 

There was a sense of finality in the shabby room. The 
invisible bond that had held them through eight years of 
separation and silence had given way. It was almost a 
physical thing. It checked and damped down Cosgrave’s 
excitement so that he said almost calmly: 

“Well, I shan’t attempt to see her again. You’ll have 
that satisfaction. I’ll get out of here — ^back to my jolly 
old swamp, where there aren’t any beastly women — decent 
or indecent — only mosquitoes.” 

He waited a moment, as though trying hard to finish 
on a warmer, more generous note. Perhaps some faint 
flicker of recollection revived in him. But it could only 
illuminate a horrifying indifference. He went out without 
30 much as a “good-night.” 

The morning papers gave the Kensington House in- 
cident due prominence. It was one more feather in Made- 


242 


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moiselle Labelle’s outrageous head-gear. The Olympic 
had not so much as standing room for weeks after. 

Cosgrave kept his word. He did not see her again, and 
within a week he had sailed for West Africa — to die. But | 
ten days later Stonehouse received a wireless, and a j 
month later a letter and a photograph of a fair-haired, 
tender-eyed, slightly bovine-looking girl in evening dress, i 
It appeared that she was a Good Woman and the daughter 
of wealthy and doting parents, and that in all probability 
West Africa would see Rufus Cosgrave no more. 

So that was the end of their boyhood. Cosgrave 
had saved himself — or something outside Stonehouse^s 
strength and wisdom had saved him. They would meet 
again and appear to be old friends. But the chapter of 
their real friendship, with all its inarticulate romance and 
tenderness, was closed finally. 

Stonehouse kept the photograph on the table of his 
consulting-room. He believed that it amused him. 

§3 

Still he could not work at night. He resumed his 
haunted prowlings through the streets. But he took care 
that he did not pass Francey Wilmot’s house again. He 
knew now that he was afraid. He was ill, too, with a 
secret, causeless malady that baffled him. There were 
nights when he suffered the unspeakable torture of a man 
who feels that the absolute control over all his faculties, 
which he has taken for granted, is slipping from him, and 
that his whole personality stands on the verge of disin- 
tegration as on the edge of a bottomless pit. 

For some weeks he hunted for Mr. Ricardo in vain. He 
tried all the favoured spots which a considerate country 
sets aside for its detractors and its lunatics so that they 
may express themselves freely, without success. Mr. 
Ricardo seemed to have taken fright and vanished. But 
one afternoon, returning from the hospital, Stonehouse 
met him by accident, and followed him. He made no 


THE DARK HOUSE 


24)3 


attempt to speak. He meant, this time, to find out where 
the old man lived, and, if possible, to come to his assist- 
ance, and his experience taught him the danger and 
futility of a direct approach. He followed therefore at a 
cautious distance that it was not always possible to 
maintain. Although it was early in the afternoon a 
dense but drifting fog wrapped the city in its dank folds, 
and the figure in front of him sometimes loomed up like a 
distorted shadow and then in a moment plunged into a 
yellow pocket of obscurity, and was lost. Then Stone- 
house could only listen for his footfalls, quick and 
irregular, echoing with an uncanny loudness in the low 
vault of the fog. 

Mr. Ricardo had evidently been speaking, for he carried 
the soap-box slung over his shoulder, and he was in a great 
hurry. It was extraordinary how fast the lame, half- 
starved old man could walk. 

They crossed the park and over to Grosvenor Place. 
There was no doubt that Mr. Ricardo knew where he was 
going, but it flashed upon Stonehouse that he was not 
going home. There was something pressed and sternly in 
earnest about the way he hurried, as though he had some 
important appointment to keep and knew that he was 
already late. Once Stonehouse had to run to keep him 
within hearing. 

They went the whole length of Victoria Street. Stone- 
house had been physically tired out when he had started. 
Now he was not aware of being tired at all. A gradually 
rising excitement carried him on, unconscious of himself. 
He had no idea what he expected, but he knew definitely 
that something deeply significant was about to happen to 
them both, that they were running into some crisis. 

Outside the Abbey the fog became impenetrable. The 
traffic had stopped, and the lights, patches of opaque 
rayless crimson, added to the confusion. There were 
people moving, however, faceless ghosts with loud foot- 
falls, feeling their way hesitatingly, and among them Mr. 
Ricardo vanished. Almost at once Stonehouse lost his 


244 


THE DARK HOUSE 


own bearings. In the complete paralysis of all sense of 
direction which only fog can produce, he crossed the 
wide street twice without knowing it. Then he came up 
suddenly under the spread statue of Boadicea and into 
little knots of people. A policeman was trying to move 
them on without success. They hung about hopefully like 
children who cannot be convinced that a show is really 
over. 

‘‘It’s no good messing round here. You aren’t helping 
anyone. Better be getting home.” 

Stonehouse knew what had happened. It was extraor- 
dinary how sure he was. It was almost as though he 
had known all along. But he said mechanically to one 
slouching shadow: 

“What is it.?” 

A face, dripping and livid in the fog, like the face of a 
dead man, gaped at him. 

“Some old fellow gone over — ^no, he didn’t tumble, I 
tell yer. You cawn’t tumble over a four-foot parapet. 
Chucked ’isself, and I don’t blame ’im. One of them 
police-launches ’as gone out to fish ’im out. But they 
won’t get ’im. Not now, anyway. Can’t see two feet in 
front of yer, and the tide running out fast.” 

Stonehouse felt his way to the parapet and peered 
over. Above the water the fog was pitch-black jand 
moving. It looked a solid mass. He could almost hear it 
slapping softly against the pillars of the bridge as it 
flowed seawards. By now Mr. Ricardo had travelled with 
it a long way. His death did not seem to Stonehouse 
tragic, but only inevitable and ironical. It was as though 
someone had played a grave and significant, not unkindly, 
joke at Mr. Ricardo’s expense. Nor did Stonehouse feel 
remorse, for he knew that he could have done nothing. As 
Mr. Ricardo had said, it was not material things that had 
mattered. He had not killed himself because he was 
starving, but because the long struggle of his spirit with 
the enigma of life had reached its crisis. He had gone 


THE DARK HOUSE 


245 


out to meet it with a superb gesture of defiance, which had 
also been the signal of surrender and acknowledgment. 

The crowd had moved on at last. In the muffled silence 
and darkness Stonehouse’s thoughts became shadowy and 
fantastic. Though he did not grieve he knew that a stone 
had shifted under the foundations of his mental security. 
Death took on a new aspect. It seemed unlikely that it 
was so simply the end. 

He found himself wondering how far Mr. Ricardo had 
travelled on his journey, and whether he had met his 
enemy, and, face to face with him, had become reconciled. 


IV 


111 E did not know why he had consented to receive her, 
unless it was because he knew that they would meet 
inevitably sooner or later. He felt very able to meet her 
— cool, and hard and clear- thinking. It was early yet. 

A wintry sunlight rested on his neatly ordered table, and 
he could smile at the idea that in a few hours he would 
begin to be afraid again. 

She had made no appointment. Urged by some caprice 
or other she had driven up to his door and sent up her I 
card with the pencilled inscription voici!^* Standing 
at his window he could just see the long graceful lines of 
her Rolls-Royce, painted an amazing blue — pale blue was 
notoriously her colour — ^and the pale-blue clad figure of j 
her chauffeur. It occurred to him that she had chosen 1 
the uniform simply to make the man ridiculous — to show i 
that there were no limits to her audacity and power. She 
was, he thought, stronger than the men who thought they 
were ruling the destinies of nations. For she could ride 
rough-shod over convention and prejudice and human 
dignity. She was perhaps the last representative of an 
autocratic egotism in a world in which the individual will 
had almost ceased to exist. She seemed to him the survival 
of an eternal evil. 

And yet when he saw her he laughed. She was so 
magnificently impossible. It seemed that she had put on 
every jewel that she could carry. She was painted more 
profusely than usual, and her dress was one of those 
fantastic creations with which producers endeavour to 
bluff through a peculiarly idiotic revue. But she carried 

246 


THE DARK HOUSE 


247 


it all without self-consciousness. It was as natural to her 
as gay plumage to a bird-of-paradise. 

She gave him her hand to kiss, and then laughed and 
shook hands instead with an exaggerated manliness. 

“I forget,” she said. “It is a bad ’abit. You see. I 
keep my promise. I make ze return call. And ’ow kind 
of you to see me.” 

“It didn’t occur to you that I might refuse,” he told 
her. 

“No, that’s true. I never thought about it. You ’ave 
a lee tie time for me, hein?*^ 

“About ten minutes,” he said. 

He assumed a very professional attitude on the other 
side of his table. He wanted to nonplus and disconcert 
her, if such a thing were possible. Now that his first 
involuntary amusement was over he felt a return of 
the old malignant dislike. She had cost him Cosgrave’s 
friendship, and he wanted to hurt her — to get underneath 
that armour of soulless good-humour. “I knew that you’d 
turn up one day or other,” he said. 

She looked at him with a rather wdstful surprise. 

“ ’Ow clever of you! You knew.?^ Don’t I look well, 
hem? I feel well — quite aU right. But I say to myself: 
^Voyons — ’alf an hour with nothing to do. I pay that 
cross doctor a visit.’ I would ’ave come before, but I 
’ave been so busy. We re’earse ‘Mademoiselle Panta- 
lonne,’ ze first night to-morrow. You come.^^ I send you 
a ticket.” 

“Thanks. That form of entertainment wouldn’t enter- 
tain me — except pathologically. And if I went to the 
theatre I’d rather leave my profession outside.” 

“Path — pathologically,” she echoed. “That sounds 
’orrid — rather rude. You don’t like me still, hein, 
doctor.^” 

“Does that surprise you?” 

“It surprise me ver’ much,” she admitted frankly. She 
picked up the photograph on the table and examined it 


248 


THE DARK HOUSE 


with an unconscious impertinence. “You like ’er?” she 
asked. “That sort of woman?” 

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never met her.’^ 

“She is not your wife?” 

“She is Cosgrave’s wife.” 

It was evident that although the episode had been con-^ 
eluded less than three months before she had already 
almost forgotten it. 

“Cosgrave? Ah ouZy le cher petit Rufus? There now 
— did I not tell you? Didn’t I ’ave reason? Tell me — ’ow 
many babies ’ave ’e got?” 

“They were married last month,” Stonehouse observed. 

^^Ah—la la! But ’ow glad I am! I can see she isi the 
right sort for ’im. A nice leetle girl. But first ’e ’ave to 
’ave a good time — ^just to give ’im confidence. Now ’e be a 
ver’ good boy — a leetle dull per’aps, but ver’ good and 
’appy. I would write and tell ’im ’ow glad I am — ^but 
per’aps better not, hein?'^ 

She winked, and there was an irresistible drollery in the 
grimace that made his lips twitch. And yet she was 
shameless — abominable. 

“The ten minutes are almost up,” he said, “and I sup- 
pose you came here to consult me.” 

He knew that she had not. She had come because 
he was a tantalizing object, because she could not credit 
his invincibility, which was a challenge to her. She 
laughed, shrugging her shoulders. 

“You are an ’orrible fellow! You think of nothing but 
diseases and wickedness. I wonder if you ’ave ever ’ad 
a good time yourself — ever laughed, like I do, from ze 
’eart?” 

He looked away from her. He felt for a moment oddly 
uneasy and distressed. 

“No, I don’t suppose I have.” 

“Ah, e'est dommagey mon pauvre jeune homme. But 
you don’t like me. What can I do?” 

“I don’t expect you to do anything.” 

“Not my business, hein? No one ’ave any business 


THE DARK HOUSE 


249 


’ere who ’ave not got an illness. Ver’ well. I will ’ave 
an illness — a ver’ leetle one. No, not ze tummy-ache. 
C*est vietuv jeu ^a. But a leetle sore throat. You know 
about throats, heinV* 

“My specialty,” he said smiling back at her with hard 
eyes. 

“Bien, I ’ave a leetle sore throat — fatigue plutot — ’e 
come and ’e go. I smoke too much. But I ’ave to smoke. 
It’s no good what you say.” 

“I’m sure of that,” he said. 

He made her sit down in the white iron chair behind 
the screen and, adjusting his speculum, switched on the 
light. He was bitterly angry because she had forced 
this farce upon him. He felt that she was laughing aU 
over. The pretty pinkness of her open mouth nauseated 
him. He thought of all the men who had kissed her, and 
had been ruined by her as though by the touch of a deadly 
plague. He pressed her tongue down with a deliberate 
roughness. 

“You ’urt,” she muttered. But her eyes were still 
amused. 

“A great many people get hurt here,” he said com- 
temptuously, “and don’t whine about it.” 

§2 

Ten minutes later they sat opposite each other by 
his table. She was coughing and laughing and wiping 
her eyes. 

"'C'est abominabW she gasped, "‘ahommahler 

He waited. He could afford to wait. He had the feel- 
ing of being carried on the breast of a deep, quiet sea. He 
could take his time. Her laughter and damnable light- 
heartedness no longer fretted and exasperated him. 
Rather it was a kind of bitter spice — a tense screwing up 
of his exquisite sense of calm power. She was like a 
tigress sprawling in the sunshine, not knowing that its 
heart is already covered by a rifle. He prolonged the 


250 


THE DARK HOUSE 


moment deliberately, savouring it. In that deliberation 
the woman in the hospital, Francey Wilmot, Cosgrave, 
and a host of faceless men who had gone under this 
woman’s chariot wheels played their devious, sinister 
parts. They goaded him on and justified him. He became 
in his own eyes the figure of the Law, pronouncing 
sentence, weightily, without heat or passion or pity. 

“You do it on purpose,” she said, “you make me 
cough.” 

He arranged his papers with precise hands. 

“I’m sorry — I know you came here as a joke. It isn’t 
— not for you. It’s serious.” He saw her smile, and 
though he went on speaking in the same quiet, methodical 
tone, he felt that he had suddenly lost control of himself. 
“Medical science isn’t an exact science. Doctors are 
never sure of anything until it has happened. But speak- 
ing with that reservation I have to tell you that your case 
is hopeless — that you have three — at the most four 
months ” 

She had interrupted with a laugh, but the laugh itself 
had broken in half. She had read his face. After a long 
interval she asked a question — one word — almost inaudibly 
— and he nodded. 

“If you had come earlier one might have operated,” 
he said. “But even so, it would have been doubtful.” 

Already many men and women had received their final 
sentence here in this room, and each had met it in his 
own way. The women were the quietest. Perhaps their 
lives had taught them to endure the hideous indignity of a 
well-ordered death-bed without that galling sense of 
physical humiliation which tormented men. For the most 
part they became immersed in practical issues — ^how the 
news was to be broken to others, who would look after 
the house and the children, and how the last scene 
might be acted with the least possible inconvenience and 
distress for those who would have to witness it. Some 
men had raved and stormed and pleaded, as though he had 
been a judge whose judgment might be revoked: “Not 


THE DARK HOUSE 


251 


me — others — not me — not to-day — ^years hence.” They 
had paced his private room for hours, trying to get a hold 
over themselves, devasted with shame and horror at the 
breakdown of their confident personalities. Some had 
risen to an impregnable dignity, finer than their lives. 
One or two had laughed. 

And this woman? 

He looked up at last. He thought with a thriU that was 
not of pity, of a bird hit in fuU flight and mortally hurt, 
panting out its life in the heather, its gay plumage limp 
and dishevelled. The jewels and outrageous dress had 
become a jest that had turned against her. A shadow 
of the empty, good-humoured smile still lingered on a 
painted mouth palsied with fear. She was swaying 
slightly, rhythmically, backwards and forwards, and rub- 
bing the palms of her hands on the carved arms of her 
chair, and he could hear her breath, short and broken like 
the shallow breathing of a sick animal. And yet he 
became aware that she was thinking — thinking very 
rapidly — calling up unexpected reserves. 

*^Trois — mois — trois uwis. Well, but I don’t feel so 
ill — I don’t feel ill at all — ^per’aps for a leetle month — ^just 
a leetle month.” 

He had no clue to her thought. She looked about her 
rather vaguely as though everything had suddenly become 
unreal. There were tears on her cheeks, but they were 
the tears of her recent laughter. She rubbed them off on 
the back of her hand with the unconscious gesture of a 
street child. 

“I suffer much?” 

‘‘I’m afraid so. Though, of course, anyone who attends 
on you will do his best.” 

“Death so ugly — so sad.” 

“Not always,” he said. 

It was true. She had been a beast of prey all her life. 
Now it was her turn to be overtaken and tom down. Only 
sentimentalists like Francey Wilmot could see in her a 
cause for pity or regret. 


252 


THE DARK HOUSE 


They sat opposite each other through a long silence. He 
gave her time. He showed her consideration. He thought 
of the pale-blue chauffeur waiting in the biting cold of a 
winter’s afternoon. Well, he would be alive after she had 
become a loathsome fragment of corruption. He was 
revenged — they were all revenged on her now. 

She fumbled with her gold and jewelled bag. 

“What do I owe, Monsimr le docteurf'* 

“Three guineas.” 

She put the money on the table. 

“That is ver’ little for so much. I think — ^when I can’t 
go on any more — I come to your ^ospital. You take me 
in, hem? I ’ave a fancy.” 

He made an unwilling movement. It revolted him — this 
obtuseness that would not see that he hated her. 

“I can’t prevent your coming if you want to. You 
would be more in your element in your own home. Even 
in their private rooms they don’t allow the kind of things 
you’re accustomed to. There are regulations. Your 
friends won’t like them.” 

She looked up at him with a startled intentness. 

^^Mes pawvres amis — I ’ave so many. They won’t 
understand. They say: ‘That’s one of Gyp’s leetle jokes.’ 
They won’t believe it — they won’t dare.” 

She gave him her hand, and he touched it perfunctorily. 

“It’s as you like, of course. You have only to let me 
know.” 

“You are ver’ kind.” 

He showed her to the door, and rang the bell for the 
servant. From his vantage point he saw the pale-blue 
chauffeur hold open the door of the pale-blue limousine. 
A few loiterers gaped. By an ironical chance a barrel- 
organ in the next street began to grind out the riotous, 
familiar gallop. It sounded far-off like a jeering echo: 

“Tm Gyp Labelle; 

If you dance with me 
You dance to my tune. . . ” 


THE DARK HOUSE 


253 


A danse macabre. He wondered if she had brains or 
heart enough to appreciate the full bitterness of that 
chance. He could see her, in his mind’s eye, cowering 
back among the pale-blue cushions. 

The next morning he received a note from her and a 
ticket for the first night of “Mademoiselle Pantalonne” — 
*‘with her regards and thanks.” 

§3 

He went. In the morning he had tossed the ticket 
aside, scornful and outraged by such a poor gesture of 
bravado. But the night brought the old restlessness. He 
was driven by curiosity that he believed was professional 
and impersonal. It was natural enough that he should 
want to see how a woman of her stuff acted under sentence 
of death. But once in the theatre be became aware of a 
black and solitary pride because he alone of all these 
people could taste the full flavour of her performance. He 
had become omniscient. He saw behind the scenes. Whilst 
the orchestra played its jaunty overture he watched her. 
He saw her stare into her glass and dab on the paint, 
thicker and thicker, knowing now why she needed so much 
more, shrinking from the skull that was beginning to peer 
through the thin mask of flesh and blood. He foresaw 
the moment, probably before the footlights, when the 
naked horror of it all would leap out on her and tear her 
down. Even in that she would no doubt seek the consola- 
tion of notoriety. It would be in all the papers. If she 
had the nerve to carry on people would crowd to see her, 
as in the Roman days they had crowded to the circus 
(gloating and stroking themselves secretly, thinking: “It 
is not I who am dying”). Or she would seek dramatic 
refuge in her absurd palace and surround herself with 
tragic glamour, making use of her own death as she had 
used the death of that infatuated and unhappy prince. 

And yet he was sick at heart. In flashes he saw his 


254f 


THE DARK HOUSE 


own attitude as something hideous and abnormal. Then 
again he justified it, as he had always justified it. He 
found himself arguing the whole matter out with Francey 
Wilmot — a cool and reasoned exposition such as he had 
been incapable of at the crisis of their relationship. (‘‘This 
woman is a malignant growth. Nature destroys her. Do 
you pretend to feel regret or pity?”) But though he 
imagined the whole scene — saw himself as authoritative 
and convincing — he could not re-create Francey Wilmot. 
She remained herself. Her eyes, fixed on him with that 
remembered look of candid and questioning tenderness, 
blazed up into an anger as unexpectedly fierce and un- 
compromising. And he was not so strong. He had over- 
worked all his life. Starved too often. The ground 
slipped from under his feet. 

It was a poor, vulgar show — a pantomime jerry-built 
to accommodate her particular talent. She walked 
through it — the dumb but irresistible model of a French 
atelier, who made fools of all her lovers, cheated them, 
sucked them dry and tossed them off with a merry 
cynicism. When the mood took her she danced and her 
victims danced behind her, a grotesque ballet, laughing 
and clapping their hands, as though their cruel sufferings 
were, after all, a good joke. Neither they nor the audi- 
ence seemed to be aware that she could not dance at all, 
and that she was not even beautiful. 

It was an old stunt, disguised with an insolent care- 
lessness. The producers had surely grinned to them- 
selves over it. “We know what the public likes. Rubbish, 
and the older the better. Give it ’em.” She even made 
her familiar entry between the curtains at the back of the 
stage, standing in the favourite attitude of simple, 
triumphant expectation, and smiling with that rather 
foolish friendliness that until now had never shaken her 
audiences from their frigidity. To them she had always 
been a spectacle, a strange vital thing with a lurid past 
and a dubious future, shocking and stimulating. They 


THE DARK HOUSE 


255 


would never have admitted that they liked her. But to- 
night they gave her a sort of ashamed welcome. Perhaps 
it was the dress she wore — the exaggerated peg-top 
trousers and bonnet of a conventional Quartier Latin 
which made her look frank and boyish. Perhaps it was 
something more subtle. Stonehouse himself felt it. But 
then, he knew. He saw her as God saw her. If there was 
a God He certainly had His amusing moments. 

But he found himself clapping her with the rest, and 
that made him angry and afraid. It seemed that he 
could not control his actions any more than his thoughts. 
The whole business had got an unnatural hold over him. 
He half got up to go, and then realized that he was trying 
to escape. 

It was jolly music too. That at any rate her producers 
had toiled at with some zeal. Incredibly stupid and art- 
less and jolly. Anyone could have danced to it. And she 
was a gutter-urchin, flinging herself about in the sheer joy 
of life (with death capering at her heels!). He watched 
her, leaning forward, waiting for some sign, the faltering 
gesture, a twitching grimace of realization. Or was it 
possible that she was too empty-hearted to feel even her 
own tragedy, too shallow to suffer, too stupid to foresee 
At least he knew with certainty that in that heated, ex- 
hausted atmosphere pain had set in. 

He became aware that the sweat of it was on his own 
face — that he himself was labouring under an intolerable 
physical burdet. He knew too much. (If God had His 
amusing moments he had also to suffer, unless, as Mr. 
Ricardo had judged, he was a devil.) She was facing 
what every man and woman in that theatre would have to 
face sooner or later. How.? She at any rate danced as 
though there were nothing in the world but life. With 
each act her gestures, her very dress became the clearer 
expression of an insatiable, uncurbed lust of living. At 
the end, the orchestra, as though it could not help itself, 
broke into the old doggerel tune that had helped to make 
her famous : 


266 


THE DARK HOUSE 


“I’m Gyp Labelle.” 

She waltzed and somersaulted round the stage, and as 
the curtain fell she stood before the footlights, panting, 
her thin arms raised triumphantly. He could see the 
tortured pulse leaping in her throat. He thought he read 
her lips as they moved in a voiceless exclamation: 

'^Quand meme — quand meiner 

The audience melted away indifferently. They, at any 
rate, did not know what they had seen. 

And the next day he had another little note from her, 
written in a great sprawling hand. She had made all her 
arrangements, and she thought she had better reserve 
rooms in his hospital in about six weeks’ time for about a 
month. After that, no doubt, she would require less 
accommodation. 

A silly, fatuous effort, in execrable taste. 


V 


§1 

T^OBERT STONEHOUSE took a second leave that he 
could not afford and went back to the grey cottage on 
the moors, and tramped the hills in haunted solitude. The 
spring ran beside him, a crude, bitter, young spring, 
gazing into the future with an earnest, passionate face, 
full of arrogance and hope, and self-distrust. His own 
frustrated youth rose in him like a painful sap. He was 
much younger than the Robert Stonehouse who, proud 
in his mature strength, had dragged an exhausted, 
secretively smiling Cosgrave on his relentless pursuit — 
young and insecure, with odd nameless rushes of emotion 
and desire and grief that had had no part in his ordered 
life. 

The hills had changed too. They had been the back- 
ground to his exploits. They had become brooding, 
mysterious partners whose purpose with him he had not 
fathomed. The things that ran across his path, the 
quaint furry hares and scurrying pheasants had ceased 
to be objects on which he could vent his strength and 
cunning. They were live things, deeply, secretly related 
to him and to a dying, very infamous woman, and his 
levelled gun sank time after time under the pressure of 
an inexplicable pity. He had stood resolutely aloof from 
life, and now it was dragging him down into its warmth 
with invisible, resistless hands. Its values, which he had 
learnt to judge coldly and dispassionately, weighing one 
against another, were shifting like sand. He seemed to 
stand, naked and alone, in a changing, terrifying world. 

In those days the papers in their frivolous columns, 
257 


258 


THE DARK HOUSE 


were full of Gyp Labelle. Her press-agent was working 
frenziedly. It seemed that she had quarrelled with her 
manager, tom her contract into shreds, and slapped his 
face. There were gay doings nightly at the Kensington 
house — orgies. One paper hinted at a certain South 
African millionaire. 

A last fling — the reckless gesture of a worthless panic- 
stricken soul, without dignity. 

Or perhaps she had found that his diagnosis had been 
a mistake. Or she would not believe the truth. Or she 
was drugging herself into forgetfulness. Perhaps she 
might even have the courage to make an end before the 
time came when forgetfulness would be impossible. 

He returned to town, drawn by an obsession of uncer- 
tainty. He found that she had arrived at her rooms in 
the hospital with the shrivelled old woman and the macaw 
and a gramophone. 

She had signed the register as Marie Dubois. 

§2 

“It is my real name,” she explained, “but you couldn’t 
have a good time with a name like that — voyonsl Only 
one ’usband and ’eaps of babies.” 

She was much nearer the end than he had supposed 
possible. The last month had to be paid for. She lay 
very still under the gorgeous quilt which she had brought 
with her, and her hand, which she had stretched out to 
him in friendly welcome, was like the claw of a bird. 
“Everyone ’ere promise not to tell,” she said. “I’m just 
MaHe Dubois. Even ze undertaker — ’e must not know. 
You put on ze stone: ‘Marie Dubois, ze beloved daughter 
of Georges and Marianne Dubois, rag-pickers of Paris.’ 
That will be a last leetle joke, hein?^^ 

“It’s as you wish,” he said coldly. 

He forced back the natural questions that came to 
him. He had a disordered conviction that he was fighting 
her for his sanity, for the very ground on which he had 


THE DARK HOUSE 


259 


built his life, and that he dared not yield by so much as a 
kindly word. He did what lay in his power for her with 
a heart shut and barred. 

She brought a little of her world and her whole outlook 
with her. On the last day that she was able to be up 
she dressed herself in a gay mandarines coat with a 
Chinese woman’s trousers, and tried to do her dance for 
the benefit of a shocked and fascinated matron. Every 
morning she wore a new cap to set off the deepening 
shadow of dissolution. 

By the open fire the old woman embroidered cease- 
lessly. 

“She is making — ’ow you call it? — ^my shroud. You 
see — ^with ze blue ribbons. Blue — that’s my colour — my 
lucky colour. As soon as I could speak I ask for blue 
ribbons in my pinafore.” 

“I should have thought your mind might be better 
occupied now,” he retorted with brutal commonplaceness. 

She -winked at him. 

“Oh, but I ’ave ’ad my lee tie talk with Monsieur le 
Cure. ’E and I are ze best of friends, though I never 
met ’im before. ’E understand about ze blue ribbons. 
But Monsieur Robert is too clever.” 

“It seems so,” he said scornfully. 

She questioned him from out of the thickening cloud of 
morphia. “You don’t believe in God?” And then as he 
shook his head she smiled sleepily. “Well, it is still pos- 
sible ’e exist. Monsieur — Monsieur le docteur.'* 

She lay quiet so that he thought she had fallen asleep, 
but the next moment her eyes had opened, widening on him 
with a startling wakefulness. It was as though her whole 
personality had leapt to arms, and bursting through the 
narcotic, stood free with a gay and laughing gesture. 
“As to God — I don’t know about ’im, but I exist — I go 
on. You bet your ’at on that, my friend. I don’t know 
where I go — but I go somewhere. And I dance. And if 
St. Peter sit at ze golden gates, like they say in ze fairy- 
book, I say to ’im: ‘ ’Ave you ever seen ze Gyp Galop?’ 


260 


THE DARK HOUSE 


And then I dance for ’im and ze angels play for me” — she 
nodded wickedly — “not ’ymn tunes.” 

She was serious. She meant it. If she survived she 
survived as what she was or not at all. And looking down 
on her wasted, tortured body, Stonehouse had a momen- 
tary but extraordinarily vivid conviction that what she 
had said was true. She would persist. Whatever else 
happened. Gyp Labelle would go on having a good time. 
She could not be extinguished. There was in her some 
virtue altogether apart from the body — a blazing vitality, 
an unquenchable, burning spirit. 

He felt his hatred of her wither before it. 

“And ’e say: ‘You dance ver’ bad. Gyp, but you make 
me laugh. You go on and dance to ze others.’ For ’e 
know who I am. My poor parents they make ze mistake. 
They think: ‘ ’Ere is such a ver’ nice, good little bebSy and 
so they call me after my Mamcmy who is ver’ nice and good 
too, and who love me ver’ much — Marie — Marie Dubois.” 

She turned her head towards the old woman bending 
lower and lower over her fine work, and, smiling at her, 
fell asleep. 

He returned, one night, to the hospital in the hope of 
being able to work in the laboratory, and instead, coming 
to her room, he went in. The action was so un- 
premeditated and unmotivated that he had closed the 
door before he knew what he had done. But the excuse 
he framed in his confusion was never uttered, for he had 
the right to appear dumbfounded. She sat, propped up 
like a painted wraith against a pile of gorgeous cushions, 
and all about her was scattered a barbarous loot of rings 
and bracelets, of strings of pearls, of unset stones, 
diamonds and emeralds, heaped carelessly on the table at 
her side, and twinkling like little malevolent eyes out of the 
creases of her coverlet. 

The old woman wrote toilingly on a slip of paper. 

“Sh! This is ver’ solemn. I could not sleep, and so 
I make my testament.” She put her finger to her lips as 


THE DARK HOUSE 


261 


though her whisper were only a part of a playful mystery 
and beckoned him, and he went towards her, reluctant, yet 
unresisting like a man hypnotized. He had a childish 
longing to touch all that colour, to take up great hand- 
fuls of it and feel its warmth and let it drip through his 
fingers. The death that stared out of her painted face, 
the silence and grim austerity of her surroundings made 
that display of magnificence a fantastic parable. The 
stones were the life that was going from her. She picked 
up each one in turn and caressed it, and held it to the 
light, remembering who knew what escapade, what splen- 
did, reckless days, what tragedy. And yet there was 
no regret and surely no remorse in her farewell of them. 

“Afa Vieille — she make a list of all. They will be sold 
— for ze children of Paris — ze gamins — as I was — for a 
good time.” She held out her hand: ^^C'est joU, n'est ce 
pasr 

He looked unwillingly. It was a black opal, and as she 
moved it it seemed to come to life, and a distant resentful 
fire gleamed out of its sullen depths. 

“Yes; But you oughn’t to have all — all this stuff 
about. No one could be held responsible ” 

“What does it matter If someone take it — someone 
’ave it. It won’t worry me. ’Ere, I tell you something — 
a story, Jieiny to amuse you.? You remember our leetle 
dinner and ’ow I would not tell about ze Grand Duke and 
ze black opal.? Well, I tell you now. It don’t matter 
any more.” 

“No. You’re doing yourself harm. You ought to 
sleep.” 

“I don’t want to — I can’t. It is ’orrible to lie awake 

in ze dark and And you, too. Monsieur Robert, you 

don’t feel you sleep much to-night, hein?** 

“No.” 

‘^Alors — ’ere we are — two poor fellows shipwrecked — 
we make a leetle feast together — a feast of good stories. 
You say you don’t like me ver’ much. But that is ridicule 


262 


THE DARK HOUSE 


now. One only ’ates when one is afraid, and you aren’t 
afraid any more of poor Gyp.” 

“Was I ever.?”’ he demanded. 

“A leetle — per’aps.^^ You think to yourself: ‘If I love 

’er !’ Bah, that is all finished. Come, I tell you my 

funny story.” 

He had laughed. He was incredulous of himself. He 
sat on the edge of her bed listening to her whisper, a 
tortured whisper which she made supremely funny — a 
mock-conspirator’s whisper which drew them close to one 
another in an outrageous intimacy. 

“At any rate you had made a good enemy that time,” 
he said. 

She panted. 

“Ah no — no. ’E ’ave a fine sense of humour. Monsieur 
ze Grand Duke. ’E laugh too. ’E say — ‘Gyp — you are 
ze ver’ devil ’erself !’ ’Ere, but this ruby — I don’t care 
much for rubies — but this one ’ave a real fine story.” 

And so one by one the stones were taken up and held 
a moment, some to be discarded with a name or a forgetful 
shrug, and some to linger a while longer whilst she recalled 
their little ribald histories. And it seemed to Robert 
Stonehouse that gradually the room filled with invisible 
personages who, as the jewels dropped from her waxen 
fingers into the gaping box, bowed to her and took their 
leave. And at last they were all gone but one. He seemed 
to hear them, their footsteps receding faintly along the 
corridors. 

She held an unset pearl in her hand. 

“This one ’ave a ver’ nice leetle story. A brigand give 
it me when ’e ’old up ze train between Mexico City and ze 
coast. A fine fellow — with a sombrero and a manner!” 
(She looked past Stonehouse, smiling, as though she too 
saw the shadow twirling its black moustache and staring 
back at her with gallant admiration.) “And brave too, 
nomhre de Dios! And ’e bow and say: ‘One does not 
take ransom from Mademoiselle Labelle. One pays 


THE DARK HOUSE 


263 


tribute,’ And ’e give me this to remember ’im by — as I 
give it you, Monsieur Robert.” 

He stood up sharply. 

“No — I — I don’t care for that kind of thing.” 

“For your wife, then!” 

“I am not married.” 

“But one day per’aps? You love someone, heinV^ 
(Had she wilfully forgotten? She studied his face with 
a wicked curiosity. He could not answer her.) “Give it 
’er then — Monsieur Robert — pour jrve faire plaisir’* 

“There is no one to give it to.” 

“But there was ” 

He tried desperately to regain the old sarcastic 
inflection. 

“No doubt it seems inevitable to you.” 

“Tell me about ’er. Voyons^ if you can’t keep me alive. 
Monsieur mon docteur, you might at least amuse me.” 

“There is nothing to tell. I will give you something 
that will make you sleep.” 

“I do not want to sleep. That is bad, ugly sleep that 
you give me. So you quarrel. What you quarrel about. 
Monsieur Robert? Another woman?” 

The sheer, grotesque truth of it drove him to an 
ironical assent. 

“As you say, another woman ” 

“O/i, la la! So there was once upon a time a ver’ serious 
young man who forget to be quite serious. Voyons — ^you 
’ave to tell me all now — just as I tell you.” 

He turned on her then. In five brief, savage sentences 
he had told her of Frances and the woman in the hospital. 
And when he had done he read her face with its tolerant 
good-humour, and the full enormity of it all burst over 
him like a flood of crude light. He turned away from her 
stammering ; 

“I’ve no business here — I’ve no business to be your 
doctor — or anyone’s doctor. I think I must be going 
mad.” 

She shook her head. 


264 ^ 


THE DARK HOUSE 


“No — no — only too serious, mon pauvre jev/ne homme. 
But I like your — your Francey. I think she and I be 
good friends some’ow. She would see things ’ow I see 
them.” 

(He thought crazily: 

“Yes, she would sit by you and look over your shoulder 
at your rotten life, and say: ‘So that’s the way it seems 
to you.f^ And you’re right. It’s been a splendid joke.’ ”) 

“One of these days you be friends again too. And then 
you give ’er my leetle pearl. Say it’s from Gyp, who is 
sorry she made so much trouble. Why not.?^ You think 
it make her sad.? It is not for that I give it you. It is to 
give you pleasure too.” 

He was labouring under an almost physical distress. 
She was poking fun at him, at herself, at death. She was 
making him a partner of thieves and loose women. And 
yet: 

“It must not make you sad at all. When you see it 
you laugh — ^just as you laugh when I dance because I 
dance so ver’ bad. Look ’ere, I ’ave something that you 
give me too.” She dived back into the box and brought 
out a shilling lying side by side with the pearl in the palm 
of her open hand. “You tell ’er — that was all poor Gyp 
was worth to you. Monsieur Robert.” 

He had taken it. She tried to laugh out loud, trium- 
phantly, the famous laugh. And then grey agony had her 
by the throat. She turned her face from him to the 
wall. 

He felt that the old woman had risen. She was moving 
towards them. He said quietly : 

“At least I can relieve you.” 

She made a passionate, absolute gesture of refusal. An 
astonished nurse had entered. He gave brief instructions. 
He said good-night, not looking at the limp, quiet figure 
on the bed, and went out. 

He knew that he had seemed competent, unhurried and 
unmoved as befitted a man to whom death was the most 
salient feature of life. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


265 


But he knew also that he had fled from her. 

In the crowd that went with him that night were 
Francey Wilmot and Connie Edwards and Cosgrave and 
all the people who had made up his youth. There were 
little old women who were Christines, and even James; 
Stonehouse was there, tragically and hopefully in search 
of something that he had never found. Any moment he 
might turn his face towards his son, and it would not be 
hideous, only perplexed and pitiful. 

It was as though an ugly, monstrous mass had been 
smashed to fragments whose facets shone with extraor- 
dinary, undreamed-of colours. 

Not only the bodies of the people drifted with him, 
but their lives touched his on every side. It became a sort 
of secret pressure. They were neither great nor beautiful. 
They were identical with the people he had always seen 
on the streets and in the hospitals, sickly or grossly com- 
monplace, but he could no longer judge them as from a 
great distance. He was down in the thick of them. They 
concerned him — or he had no other concern. He was part 
of their strangely wandering procession. He looked into 
their separate faces and thought: “This man says ‘I’ to 
himself. And one day he will say : T am dying’ ( as Marie 
Dubois said it).” And he recognized for the first time 
something common to them all that was not commonplace 
— an heroic quality. At least that stark fact remained 
that at their birth sentence of death had been passed upon 
them all. Before each one of them lay a black adventure, 
and they went towards it, questioning or inarticulate, not 
knowing why they should endure so much, but facing the 
utter loneliness of that final passage with patience and 
great courage. 

It was not ridiculous that they should demand their 
immortality, the least and worst of them. Whether it 
was granted them or not, it was a just demand, and the 
answer to it more vital than any other form of knowledge. 
For it was conceivable that one day they would be too 


266 


THE DARK HOUSE 


strong and too proud to play the part of tragic buffoons 
in a senseless farce. 

In the meantime men might well be pitiful with one 
another. 

“What was it she had said.?^” 

“Nothing that you’ve gone through is of any use if it 
hasn’t taught you pity.” 

(“Oh, Francey, Francey, if I had told you that 
Christine was dead would it have helped Would you 
have had more patience with me.?”) 

The quiet and emptiness of his own street restored him 
in some measure to his aloof scepticism. But even then 
he knew there was a disruptive force secretly at work in 
him, tearing down stone by stone his confidence and cour- 
age. He was afraid of shadows. A bowed figure crouched ' 
against the railings of his house checked him as though a 
ghost had lain in wait for him. He passed it hurriedly, 
running up the stone steps. The sound of a thin, clear 
voice calling him made him turn again, his head thrown up 
in a sort of defiance. 

“Monsieur — excuse — excuse — I wait ’ere so long. They 
tell me you come back ’ere per’aps. But they don’t know 

I ’ave come. I creep out Monsieur she cannot sleep 

— she cannot sleep. They don’t do nothing. It is not 
right. I cannot ’ave it — that she suffer so.” 

He came back down the steps. He was conscious of 
having sighed deeply. He looked into the shrivelled, up- 
turned face, and saw the tears that filled the furrows with 
a slow moving stream. He had hardly noticed her before. 
Now she hurt him. A very little old woman. He said 
briefly, hiding a shaken voice: 

“They do all they can. I can do no more.” 

She reiterated with a peasant’s obstinacy. 

“I will not ’ave it — I will not — not ’ave it — 1 cannot 
bear it.” 

“Dr. Rutherford is there. I tell you he can do all that 


THE DARK HOUSE 267 

can be done. I offered her an injection — she would not 
have it.” 

“She pretend — all ze time she pretend. Even before 
me, ’er mother, she pretend. But I know.” 

“Her mother!” 

He stepped back against the railings, freeing himself 
fretfully from the hand that clutched his arm. 

I “If you are her mother she treats you strangely. She 
I treats you like a servant.” 

1 “Before others. Monsieur. She is different — of differ- 
I ent stuff. We ’ave always understood. If I am to be with 
’er it must be as ’er servant. That is our affair. But you 
are not kind. You let ’er suffer too much. I will not 
’ave it.” 

She drew herself up. She almost menaced him. He 
saw that she knew. As a physician he had done what lay 
in his power, but as a human being he had faded utterly 
and deliberately. Had always failed. And he was aware 
of an incredible fear of her. 

“I will come now,” he stammered. 

He gave her such sleep that night that it seemed un- 
likely that she would ever wake again. He knew that he 
had exceeded the limits of mercy set down by his profession 
and that the nurse had looked strangely at him. But he 
I was indifferent. It was as though he, too, had been 
i momentarily released. 

Nor did he leave her again until the morning, but 
watched over her, whilst on the other side of the bed the 
old woman knelt, her face pressed against a stiU hand, a 
battered, sullen effigy of grief. 

§3 

From the beginning she had defied the regulations of 
, the hospital, as she had defied the rules of life, with an 
absolute success. The inelastic, military system bent and 
; stretched itself beneath her good-humoured inability to 


268 


THE DARK HOUSE 


believe that there could be any wilful opposition to her 
desires. The macaw had been a case in point, the gramo- 
phone another. After tea the old woman set the instru- 
ment going for her, and when the authorities protested, 
ostensibly on behalf of neighbouring patients, it tran- 
spired that the patients rather liked it than otherwise, .and 
there were regular concerts, with the macaw shrieking its 
occasional appreciation. 

She inquired interestedly into her neighbours. She | 
seemed less concerned with their complaints than with their I 
ages, their appearance, and the time when they would re- 
turn to the outside world. With a young man on her right 
hand she became intimate. It began with an exchange of 
compliments and progressed through little folded notes 
which caused her infinite amusement to a system of code- 
tapping on the intervening wall, sufficiently scandalous in 
import, if her expression were significant. 

The nurses became her allies in this last grim flirtation, 
unaware apparently of its grimness. 

‘‘Don’t you let ’im know I am so bad,” she adjured 
them. “I tell ’im I ’ave a leetle nothing at all, and that I 
am going ’ome next week to my dear ’usband. I think 
that make ’im laugh ver’ much. ’E is ver’ bored, that 
young man. ’E say if I ’ave supper with ’im the first 
night ’e come out ’e won’t — ’ow you say.? — grouse so 
much. I say my ’usband ver’ jealous, but that I fix it I 
some’ow. ’E like that. Promise you won’t tell.?” 

They promised. 

She was almost voiceless now. That she suffered 
hideously, Stonehouse knew, but not from her. He be- 
lieved — in the turmoil of his mind he almost hoped — that 
when she was alone she broke down, but before them all 
she bore herself with an unfiagging gallantry. It was that 
gallantry of hers that dogged him, that would not let him ( 
rest or forget. It demanded of him something that he 
could not, and dared not, yield. 

And she was pitifully alone. The woman in the hospital 


THE DARK HOUSE 


269 


had not been more forsaken by her world. As to Gyp 
Labelle she went her way, and the gossip columns 
cautiously recorded the more startling items of that 
progress. It was as though some clever hand were build- 
ing up a fantastic figure that should pass at last into the 
mists of legend. 

Men laughed together over her. 

“What poor devil of a millionaire has the woman 
hobbled now?” 

It was the matron who showed Stonehouse an illustrated 
paper which produced her full-length portrait. She sat 
on the edge of her absurd fountain and her hand was 
raised in a laughing gesture of farewell. Over the top 
was written: “Gyp off to Pastures new,” and underneath 
a message which all the daily papers were to reproduce. 

“I want this way to thank all the friends who have been 
so very kind to me. We have had good times together. 
I miss you very much. I am going to find new friends 
now, but one day, I think, I dance for you again. I love 
you all. I kiss my hands to you. Au revoir. Gyp.” 

It was her vanity, that insatiable desire to figure im- 
pudently and triumphantly in the public eye. He brought 
the paper to her. But at the moment she was busy 
tapping feebly on the wall. She winked at him. 

“Sh! I teU ’im I go to-day. I make an appointment 
— next week — ze Carlton Grill — seven o’clock — ’e ’ave to 
wait a long time, ze poor young man. There, it is 
finished.” 

He showed her the picture without comment. He had 
to hold it for her — hold it very close — for she had 
exhausted herself with that last gesture of bravado. And 
then, as she smiled, a protest bom of gathering distress 
and doubt burst from him. 

“Why do you allow — this — ^hideous, impossible pre- 
tence?” 

He could feel the old woman turn towards him like a 
wild beast preparing to spring. But she herself lay still, 


270 


THE DARK HOUSE 


with closed eyes. He had to bend down to catch the [ 
remote suffering whisper. ! 

^"C'est vrai. We ’ave — such good times. And they t 
come ’ere — all those kind people — who ’ave laughed so 
much — and bring flowers — and pretend it is not true. ^ 
And they won’t believe — and when they see it they won’t j 

believe — they won’t dare ” She tried to speak more ] 

clearly, clinging to his hand for the first time, whilst a | 
sweat of agony broke out upon her face and made ghastly 
channels through its paint and powder. *‘Vous voyez — 
for them — I am — ze good times. They come to me — 
for good times. When they are too sad — ^when things 
too ’ard for them and they cannot believe any more — that 
ze good times come again — they think of me. *Voyons, la 
Gyp, she ’ave a good time always — she dance at ’er own ■ 
funeral!’ But if they see me ’ere — ^like this — they go 
away — and think in their ’earts : ^Gramd Dim, c’est 
comme ga amc nous tons — amc nous tous,* and they not 
laugh with me — any more.” 

Her hand let go its hold — suddenly. 

They sent for him that night. Haemorrhage had set j 
in. There was a light burning by her bedside, for she had 
complained of the darkness. She wore a lace cap trimmed 
with blue ribbons, but she had not had strength to paint 
her lips and cheeks again, and the old woman’s efforts had 
ended pitifully. She had grown very small in the last few | 
hours, and with her thin, daubed face and blood-stained j 
lips, she looked like a sorrowful travesty of the little circus 
clown who had ridden the fat pony and shouted **0h 
la — la!” and blown kisses to the people. 

She smiled vaguely in Stonehouse’s direction, but she 
was only half conscious. Her hand strayed over the 
gorgeous quilt, stroking it with a kind of simple pleasure. 

(She was like that, too, he thought — a dash of gay, 
unashamed colour in the sad scheme of things.) 

Towards midnight she motioned to him and whispered 
something that he could not understand. But the old 


THE DARK HOUSE 


271 


woman rose heavily from her knees and went over to the 
gramophone, thrusting aside with savage resolution the 
nurse who tried to intercept her. Stonehouse himself 
made an involuntary gesture. 

“Why not?” he said. “Let her alone.” 

He stood close to her and waited. He felt that some 
part of him was dying with her, that he stood with her 
before a black partition which was thinning slowly, and 
that presently they would both know whatever lay beyond. 

The macaw fidgeted on its golden perch, craning 
towards the light and blinking uneasily as though a 
strange thing had come into the room. The needle 
scratched under a shaking hand. 

“Fra Gyp Labelle; 

Come dance with me . . .” 

He bent over her so that his face almost touched hers. 

“I’m sorry — I’m sorry. Gyp.” 

She turned her head a little, her lips moving. It was 
evident that she had not really heard. But he knew that 
she had never borne him malice. 

And then suddenly it was over. He had broken through. 
Beyond were understanding and peace and strange and 
difficult tears. He loved her, as beneath the fret and heat 
of passion Cosgrave and all those others had loved her, 
for what she sincerely was and for the brave, gay thing 
she had to give. He loved her more simply still as in rare 
moments of their lives men love one another, saying: “This 
is my brother — this is my sister.” From his lonely 
arrogance his spirit flung itself down, grieving, beside her 
mysterious, incalculable good. 

He could hear the jolly bang-bang of the drum and the 
whoop of a trumpet. He could see her catherine-wheeling 
round the stage, and the man with the bloated face and 
tragic, intelligent eyes. 

“Life itself, my dear fellow, life itself.” 

And she was dead. 


EPILOGUE 


pOR a moment they stared at one another. He did 
not at once recognize Connie Edwards in the puri- 
tanical serge frock and with her air of rather conscious 
sobriety, and he himself stood in the shadow. He thought : 
“She’s wondering if I’m a tramp.” He felt like one, 
broken and shabby. 

“Dr. Wilmot.?” he muttered. 

She leant closer. 

“Oh, hallo — ^Robert.” She corrected herself severely, 
and held the door wide open. “Dr. Stonehouse — to be 
sure. Francey’s upstairs.’^ 

She led the way. It was almost as though she had been 
expecting him. At any rate, she was not surprised at all. 
But half-way up the stairs she glanced back over her 
shoulder. 

“I don’t usually open the door. I’m her secretary. 
And a damn good one too. Rather a jest, eh, what?” 

“Rather,” he said. 

And it was really the same room — a fire burning and 
the faun dancing in the midst of its moving shadows. 
There was a faint, warm scent of cigarette smoke and a 
solemn pile of books beside her deep chair. It wouldn’t 
be like Francey to rest under her laurels. 

She held both his hands in hers. She wore a loose, 
golden-brown wrapper such as she had always worn when 
she had been working hard. She had changed very little 
and a great deal. If something of the whimsical mysteri- 
ousness of her youth had faded she had broadened and 
deepened into a woman warm and generous as the earth. 
Her thick hair swept back from her face with the old 
272 


THE DARK HOUSE 


273 


wind-blawn look, and her eyes were candid and steadfast 
as they had ever been. But some sort of mist had been 
brushed away from them so that they saw more clearly 
and profoundly. He thought: “She has seen a great 
many people suffer. She doesn’t go away so often into 
herself.” 

He had tried hard, over and over again, to imagine 
their meeting, but he had never imagined that it would 
be so simple or that she would say to him, as though the 
eight years had not happened : 

“Why didn’t you tell me about Christine, Robert?” 

He said : 

“It wouldn’t have made any difference.” 

“I’ve been waiting for you to teU me.” 

He tried to smile. 

“You don’t know how difficult it has been to come. 
I’ve been prowling past — anight after night — trying to 
think what you’d say to me, if I turned up.” 

“You might have known.” 

“I didn’t — I don’t know even now.” 

She had made him sit down by the fire and she sat oppo- 
site him, bending towards him, with her slim, beautiful 
hands to the blaze. He felt that she knew, for all the 
outward signs of his prosperity, that he was destitute. 
He felt that his real self with which she had always been 
so much concerned had been stripped naked, and that 
she was trying to warm and console him. She was 
wrapping him round with that unchanged tenderness. 

“It’s — it’s the old room !” he said. 

But his enmity was dead. He was at peace with it. 
He had been initiated. He had heard, very faintly it is 
true, but loud enough to understand, the music to which 
the faun danced. He was not the outsider any more. 

“I wanted it to be the same.” 

“And the house ” 

“I took it as soon as I could get it. I made up my 
mind to live here, whatever it cost. You see, I was quite 
sure that you would go past one of these days to have a 


274 


THE DARK HOUSE 


look at it, and that you would say to yourself: ‘Why, 
there’s Francey, after all ! I’ll go in ’ ” 

But they both drew back instinctively. He blundered 
into a hurried question. The Gang? What had happened 
to them all? It seemed that Gertie still lived, defying 
medical opinion and apparently feeding her starved spirit 
on the treasures of the Vatican. Howard, who had 
become a very bad artist and lived on selling copies of 
the masterpieces to tourists, looked after her. 

“But they’re not married,” Francey said. “Just 
friends.” 

He said humbly : 

“Well, he’s been awfuUy decent to her.” 

As to the rest, no one knew what had become of them. 

“And you’ve done splendidly, Robert, better than any 
of us.” 

“I’ve been a failure,” he answered, “a rotten failure!” 

She accepted the statement gravely, without protest, 
and that sincerity was like a skilled hand on a wound. 
It brought comfort where a fumbling kindness would have 
been unendurable. It made him strangely, deeply happy 
to know that she would see too that he had failed. “I’ve 
never had pity on anyone — not even myself — I’ve learnt 
nothing that matters.” 

I For a while they sat silent, looking into the fire, like 
people who are waiting and preparing themselves for some 
great event. And presently, without moving, in an under- 
tone he began to tell her about the Marie Dubois who 
had died, and how he had seen her long ago at the Circus, 
his first and only circus. He told her about the Circus 
itself. He did not choose his words, but stammered and 
fumbled and jumped from one thing to another. He 
opened his heart and took out whatever he found there, 
and showed it to her very humbly, just as it was. It 
seemed certain and imperative that after a little while 
they should both see the pattern of it all. He told her 
about his love for his dead mother, and how his father 
had died and had come back, haunting him in his sleep. 


THE DARK HOUSE 


275 


Then he remembered something he had never thought of 
before — how he had looked up at the window of the room 
where his father was lying dead, and had wanted to run — 
run fast. 

“But I think I’ve lived in that dark house all my life,’^ 
he said, “and I’ve gone about in it, blustering and swag- 
gering and being hard and strong because I was so 
desperately afraid — of life, of caring too much, of fail- 
ing. And now — I’ve come out.” 

And then he began to tremble all over and suddenly 
he was crying helplessly. 

She knelt beside him. She drew him into her arms. 
It was their moment in the green forest over again, but 
now there was no antagonism in their love. She was the 
warm, good spirit of the life to which he had become 
reconciled. They had belonged to one another from the 
beginning. His fear had stood between them. But she 
had gone on loving him, steadfastly, because nothing else 
was possible to her. 

“Francey — do you remember* — that time w*e fought 
one another — over an idiotic stick? I was such a young 
rotter — I wouldn’t own up — that you were stronger than 
I was.” 

She took his wet hands and kissed them. It was as 
though she had said aloud, smiling to herself; 

“It’s all right now, anyhow, you odd, sad little boy.” 


THE END 






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